Life's blood versus life's work
Belba Grubb
/The Silmarillion/ (although the CoTW discussions on the latter work
here very interesting and well thought out indeed; I must get back into
it again as soon as there is enough time.
I used to think this preference for the LOTR was because there are
hobbits in it to "humanize" things; indeed, there's a comment in one of
JRRT's letters about that. But I was just thinking now while
transcribing, and Tolkien's remark after he sent in the MS for the
LOTR came to mind:
"It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I
can no other." (Letter 109)
He spoke truth there -- he never finished /The Silmarillion/, even
though that could be said to have been a life's work for him. If he
ever spoke so movingly about "the Sil," it either never made "Letters"
or it appeared somewhere else and I missed it (quite possible).
So, there is this investment of the author into /The Lord of the Rings/
that is not present in /The Silmarillion/, and I think it is this
complex emotional and intellectual and spiritual element in the work
that draws so many of us in, makes it live for us, and also gives us
lastingly different eyes to see our mundane world (I have really never
ceased to wonder at our ceilings, for instance, ever since Frodo woke
up in Rivendell and was very surprised to see a flat ceiling above
him!); as Chesterton would put it, to remember that we have forgotten
so much of our childhood wonder.
What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood," and
where does it come from; where can it be found (or not found) in
either work?
Barb
Count Menelvagor
Belba Grubb wrote:
> So, there is this investment of the author into /The Lord of the Rings/
> that is not present in /The Silmarillion/, and I think it is this
> complex emotional and intellectual and spiritual element in the work
> that draws so many of us in, makes it live for us, and also gives us
> lastingly different eyes to see our mundane world (I have really never
> ceased to wonder at our ceilings, for instance, ever since Frodo woke
> up in Rivendell and was very surprised to see a flat ceiling above
> him!); as Chesterton would put it, to remember that we have forgotten
> so much of our childhood wonder.
>
> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood," and
> where does it come from; where can it be found (or not found) in
> either work?
a lot of it, i think, is related to the sense of loss. there's
something about this in garth's /tolkien and the great war/, though
that work is more concerned with the origins of the /silmarillion/.
from a biographical point of view, the loss of sarehole and the death
of his close friends in WWI may have been factors. but he doesn't
fully express this sense till LOTR, that i recall at least. (perhaps
it took time to turn it into art?)
a relevant comment from tolkien's foreword to LOTR:
[tolkien cd not publish the silmarillion, so went back to hobbits.]
"but the story was drawn irresistably towards the older world, and
became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its
beginning and middle had been told."
there are similar hints in the story itself, as when theoden meets the
ents.
i think a lot of what is going on is the fading and loss of the
mythical and legendary worlds into mere "history."
Dirk Thierbach
> I've always found it easier to get into /The Lord of the Rings/ than
> I used to think this preference for the LOTR was because there are
> hobbits in it to "humanize" things;
Certainly, and you're not the only one who observed that. The LotR
also started out as a narration in itself, while the SIL is a collage
of many things JRRT has thought about for a long time, so in this
respect again the LotR is much more accessible.
> "It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I
> can no other." (Letter 109)
> He spoke truth there -- he never finished /The Silmarillion/, even
> though that could be said to have been a life's work for him. If he
> ever spoke so movingly about "the Sil," it either never made "Letters"
> or it appeared somewhere else and I missed it (quite possible).
It's my impression that the SIL was as dear to him as the LotR,
probably even dearer, but he still suffered from the rejection
its first reader. He compares both in Letter #98:
As for larger work. Of course, my only real desire is to publish 'The
Silmarillion': which your reader, you may possibly remember, allowed
to have a certain beauty, but of a 'Celtic' kind irritating to
Anglo-Saxons. Still there is the great 'Hobbit' sequel -- I use
'great', I fear, only in quantitative sense.
Note the presence of what Shippey calls the "specialised
politeness-language of Old Wester Man, in which doubt and correction
are in direct proportion to the obliquity of expression."
> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood," and
> where does it come from;
It's the same thing that Feanor put in the Silmarils, or any artist or
creative person in things that are important to him (or her).
The German term, BTW, is /Herzblut/, "heart-blood": the inner essence
of somebody.
- Dirk
Troels Forchhammer
<news:1156968487.9...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
"Belba Grubb" <trungsi...@yahoo.com> enriched us with:
> I've always found it easier to get into /The Lord of the Rings/
> than /The Silmarillion/
Quite a common experience, I'd guess, and one that I surely share.
> although the CoTW discussions on the latter work here very
> interesting and well thought out indeed; I must get back into
> it again as soon as there is enough time.
You should. Preparing for the CotW discussions on /The Silmarillion/,
reading each chapter with rather more focus and attention than I've
ever done before, has allowed me to "get into" /The Silmarillion/ in a
way that I haven't been able to before.
> I used to think this preference for the LOTR was because there are
> hobbits in it to "humanize" things; indeed, there's a comment in
> one of JRRT's letters about that.
One of the points Tom Shippey makes in /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the
Century/ is that the Hobbits are not just humans, but they are humans
that are far more contemporary to the reader. The whole hobbit society
is completely anachronistic in the setting of Middle-earth (both in
/The Hobbit/ and in /The Lord of the Rings/), and as such they can
serve us to interpret and to throw into relief the ancient world. I
think Shippey touches on something very essential in that analysis.
I furthermore think that /The Silmarillion/, which lacks this
presentation through a mechanism providing a modern light on the
subject matter, becomes as a result, to the modern mind, harder to
enter into.
> But I was just thinking now while transcribing, and Tolkien's
> remark after he sent in the MS for the LOTR came to mind:
>
> "It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin;
> and I can no other." (Letter 109)
>
> He spoke truth there -- he never finished /The Silmarillion/, even
> though that could be said to have been a life's work for him. If
> he ever spoke so movingly about "the Sil," it either never made
> "Letters" or it appeared somewhere else and I missed it (quite
> possible).
I think that the phrase "and the Silmarils are in my heart" is the best
candidate that I know of:
But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the
construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and
two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils
are in my heart.
[Letter #19 To Stanley Unwin, 16 December 1937]
My heart and mind is in the Silmarillion, but I have not
had much time for it. ....
[Letter #202 to Christopher and Faith Tolkien, 11 September 1957]
> So, there is this investment of the author into /The Lord of the
> Rings/ that is not present in /The Silmarillion/,
I can't agree to that assessment at face value. The investment in /The
Lord of the Rings/ is of another kind, perhaps, but in terms of many of
the usual parameters (time, effort, re-writing) the investment in the
Silmarillion is greater -- and I venture to suggest that the
Silmarillion was still closer to Tolkien's heart in many ways -- that,
despite the popularity of the Hobbits, Tolkien's own heart was still
given to the Silmarils (and the couple who wrested one from the Iron
Crown).
> and I think it is this complex emotional and intellectual and
> spiritual element in the work that draws so many of us in, makes
> it live for us, and also gives us lastingly different eyes to see
> our mundane world
Yes, I agree that that is important for my enjoyment of the book, but I
don't agree that it is lacking, or weaker, in the Silmarillion. These
elements have, I think, an even stronger presence, a larger role, in
the Silmarillion, but due to the book being less easily accessible, the
elements are less obvious.
The hobbits are essential in mediating the ancient world that they live
in -- the hobbits themselves are modern; they are essentially creatures
of the twentieth century transported into this ancient world, and they
are therefore capable of mediating this world for us and represent the
modern (of seventy years ago, admittedly) view. This mediating is
strengthened (and at the same time made less obvious) by the narrative
conceit of the books -- both books are essentially told /by/ hobbits.
This has allowed Tolkien to 'hide' the mediating in the narrative
voice, making it natural in the context that the narrator should apply
a more modern view on events.
<snip>
> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
> and where does it come from; where can it be found (or not found)
> in either work?
I think that if you asked Tom Shippey, he would tell you that it was
philology.
Philology, indeed, appears to have lost for these
students its connotations of terror if not of mystery. An
active discussion-class has been conducted, on lines more
familiar in schools of literature than of language, which
has borne fruit in friendly rivalry and open debate with
the corresponding literary assembly.
[...]. If elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair I
should endeavour to make productive use of the opportuni-
ties which it offers for research; to advance, to the best
of my ability, the growing neighbourliness of linguistic
and literary studies, which can never be enemies except by
misunderstanding or without loss to both; and to continue
in a wider and more fertile field the encouragement of
philological enthusiasm among the young.
[Letter #7 To the Electors of the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship
of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford, 27 June 1925]
To this Shippey adds:
Tolkien was wrong about the 'growing neighbourliness',
and about the 'more fertile field', but that was not his
fault. If he had been right, he might not have needed to
write /The Lord of the Rings/.
Tolkien's fiction is certainly rooted in philology as
defined above. He said so himself as forcefully as he
could and on every available opportunity, as for instance
(/Letters/, p. 219 [#165, TF]) in a 1955 letter to his
American publishers, trying to correct impressions given
by a previous letter excerpted in the /New York Times/:
the remark about 'philology' [in the excerpted
letter, 'I am a philologist, and all my work is
philological'] was intended to allude to what is I
think a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is
all of a piece, and /fundamentally linguistic/ in
inspiration . . . The invention of languages is the
foundation. The 'stones' were made rather to
provide a world for the languages than the reverse.
To me a name comes first and the story follows.
The emphasis in the passage quoted is Tolkien's, and he
could hardly have put what he said more strongly, but his
declaration has been met for the most part by bafflement
and denial.
[Tom Shippey, /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century/, "Foreword"]
Shippey tries, in several places, to give examples of this
fundamentally philological approach by showing how (he thinks that)
Tolkien worked by trying to fill in the cultural contextual world-view,
knowledge and beliefs that are implicitly understood in the stories he
worked with professionally. According to Shippey Tolkien believed that
people have a kind of instinctive philological understanding which he
utilized in his writing.
Reading Shippey has, for the first time, given me an idea of what
Tolkien /may/ have meant when he wrote that the task he had set himself
was "precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present
them with a mythology of their own:" a mythology and epic tradition
that could possibly have led to and inspired the stories and story-
fragments in Old English which he knew so well from his studies; a
filling-out and reading between the lines of stuff such as /Beowulf/,
/Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/ etc. etc.
I'm not entirely convinced that Shippey tells the full story (he is,
himself, a philologist by profession and thus possibly liable to
enlarging the influence of that on Tolkien's writings), but he does
make a convincing case for most of it; in particular his explanation
for the fact that much of Tolkien's world, even with the only hinted-at
background, feels so familiar, so homey, to the reader: that this is
basically a result of Tolkien's deep interest in, and understanding for
the interplay between language and the stories that are told in the
language (as is displayed already in his application for the chair at
Oxford in 1925 as quoted above).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
Love while you've got
love to give.
Live while you've got
life to live.
- Piet Hein, /Memento Vivere/
Troels Forchhammer
<news:1156998325.7...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
"Count Menelvagor" <Menel...@mailandnews.com> enriched us with:
>
> Belba Grubb wrote:
>>
<snip>
Before responding to specifics, I think it's been interesting to see
the different takes on this. It seems, however, to me that we're all
trying to pin down some elusive artistic quality from different
directions (and weighing aspects of it differently). I don't actually
disagree with any of the answers ;)
>> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
>> and where does it come from; where can it be found (or not
>> found) in either work?
>
> a lot of it, i think, is related to the sense of loss.
I think that's part of the feeling underlying much of the thematic
content: when Tolkien describes "this stuff" as being "mainly
concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine" this seems to relate
very much to loss; thematically even the 'Machine' is about loss:
both the spiritual and the physical loss that is related to the
invention and use of the Machine.
> there's something about this in garth's /tolkien and the great
> war/, though that work is more concerned with the origins of the
> /silmarillion/.
Another library book waiting on the shelf (for me to finish Shippey's
/Author of the Century/).
I could very well imagine the feeling of loss being mentioned in
Garth's book, and it probably belongs in any book about an author who
lived through the experiences of western Europe in the first half of
the last century.
> from a biographical point of view, the loss of sarehole and the
> death of his close friends in WWI may have been factors.
Yes.
> but he doesn't fully express this sense till LOTR, that i recall
> at least. (perhaps it took time to turn it into art?)
Those losses are of a more personal kind, while the sense of loss in
the Silmarillion (except for the tragedy of Túrin Turambar, IMO) is
less personalized.
In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement etc.)
associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses associated with
fighting a war which is meaningless and, though they are fighting
Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a people, not of a
person . . .
In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note) also
concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of the old
world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit allows a
peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of loss brought
down from the high and translated into something we can identify with
(the hobbit viewpoint).
Merry puts it quite well in the Houses of Healing about living on the
heights:
But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour
them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to
love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some
roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are
things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his
garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he
knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them,
a little. But I don't know why I am talking like this.
Where is that leaf? And get my pipe out of my pack, if it
isn't broken.
That is the role of the Hobbits in LotR -- to allow the reader to
experience the heights and to interpret them through their deep roots
in the Shire.
> a relevant comment from tolkien's foreword to LOTR:
>
> [tolkien cd not publish the silmarillion, so went back to
> hobbits.] "but the story was drawn irresistably towards the older
> world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing
> away before its beginning and middle had been told."
Good catch.
> i think a lot of what is going on is the fading and loss of the
> mythical and legendary worlds into mere "history."
Yes, indeed.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does
knowledge.
- Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)
Shanahan
news:Xns9833E312...@130.133.1.4...
> In message
> <news:1156998325.7...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
> "Count Menelvagor" <Menel...@mailandnews.com> enriched us with:
> > Belba Grubb wrote:
<snip>
>
> Before responding to specifics, I think it's been interesting to
see
> the different takes on this. It seems, however, to me that we're
all
> trying to pin down some elusive artistic quality from different
> directions (and weighing aspects of it differently). I don't
actually
> disagree with any of the answers ;)
>
> >> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
> >> and where does it come from; where can it be found (or not
> >> found) in either work?
> >
> > a lot of it, i think, is related to the sense of loss.
>
> I think that's part of the feeling underlying much of the thematic
> content: when Tolkien describes "this stuff" as being "mainly
> concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine" this seems to
relate
> very much to loss; thematically even the 'Machine' is about loss:
> both the spiritual and the physical loss that is related to the
> invention and use of the Machine.
<snip>
> > but he doesn't fully express this sense till LOTR, that i recall
> > at least. (perhaps it took time to turn it into art?)
>
> Those losses are of a more personal kind, while the sense of loss
in
> the Silmarillion (except for the tragedy of Túrin Turambar, IMO) is
> less personalized.
Perhaps Turin's tale expresses loss so well in part because the
Kalevala on which it is based, *was* very personal to Tolkien, the
discovery of Finnish and its legends coming so early in his life, and
inspiring such passion.
> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement
etc.)
> associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses associated with
> fighting a war which is meaningless and, though they are fighting
> Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a people, not of a
> person . . .
Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than personal
re the author. Had we been given the story from Fëanor's POV, perhaps
the sense of loss (which I agree is associated with the Fall of the
Elves, and by extrapolation our Fall as well) would feel more
personal. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had
finished (re)writing Galadriel's history. He was setting her up for a
terribly noble role in the drama of the First Age, and had enormous
sympathy for her character. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could read
the Silm. tales through Galadriel's eyes?
> In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
> single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
> seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note)
also
> concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of the old
> world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit allows a
> peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of loss brought
> down from the high and translated into something we can identify
with
> (the hobbit viewpoint).
And it works so beautifully. The Silm. tales would have felt much
"lower" if you will, if seen through the eyes of a fallen Elf, or a
Man: and so 'felt' much less mythic. Which wouldn't have served
Tolkien's purpose in writing the tales, I imagine. And that brings us
back to Barb's question, because it indicates that the "life blood"
that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was spilled intentionally: he
meant to make LotR personal, and the mythos and ancient history less
so. As the Count said in many fewer words, "a lot of what is going on
is the fading and loss of the mythical and legendary worlds into mere
'history'". But it couldn't have been done in any other way, or the
myths and legends would have read too 'low'.
- Ciaran S.
-----------------------------
Suburbanites on a plane
Shanahan
news:20060831134529...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de...
> Belba Grubb <trungsi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
> > What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
and
> > where does it come from;
>
> It's the same thing that Feanor put in the Silmarils, or any artist
or
> creative person in things that are important to him (or her).
>
> The German term, BTW, is /Herzblut/, "heart-blood": the inner
essence
> of somebody.
Someone far less exalted once said "Writing is easy. You just sit
down at a typewriter and open a vein."
- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
- BtVS
David Gray Porter
news:Xns9833E312...@130.133.1.4...
>
> Garth's book, and it probably belongs in any book about an author who
> lived through the experiences of western Europe in the first half of
> the last century.
A lot of people, particularly artists, fell apart after WWI and the loss of
the old way. The exceptions are people like Stravinsky and Varese --
others, like Ives, were devastated and never recovered. (Too bad about
Mahler -- if he had lived & made the transition to the '20s, music would
have been still more interesting.)
> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement etc.)
> associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses associated with
> fighting a war which is meaningless and, though they are fighting
> Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a people, not of a
> person . . .
I think a lot of people can relate to that crap today...
Count Menelvagor
Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> In message
> <news:1156998325.7...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
> "Count Menelvagor" <Menel...@mailandnews.com> enriched us with:
> In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
> single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
> seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note) also
> concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of the old
> world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit allows a
> peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of loss brought
> down from the high and translated into something we can identify with
> (the hobbit viewpoint).
yes, in LOTR we see through the eyes of the people experiencing the
loss, and so we empathise; in Sil we see it all(*) from above. which
shows how narrative technique can affect the reader profoundly.
<snip excellent merry quote>
(*) except turin to some extent, and possibly beren and luthien. but
even that's a little remote.
Count Menelvagor
Shanahan wrote:
> Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than personal
> re the author. Had we been given the story from Fëanor's POV, perhaps
> the sense of loss (which I agree is associated with the Fall of the
> Elves, and by extrapolation our Fall as well) would feel more
> personal. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had
> finished (re)writing Galadriel's history. He was setting her up for a
> terribly noble role in the drama of the First Age, and had enormous
> sympathy for her character. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could read
> the Silm. tales through Galadriel's eyes?
i think it's a real pity tolkien never developed her story. he wd
probably be the first to agree that his jottings on her were rubbishy,
especially compared with her wonderful portrayal in LOTR.
Donald Grove
It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
it ever so scattered) begins.
The Silmarillion is a tale of something that should not have happened,
and hence the mighty sense of loss that others describe in this
thread. It is possible that the Noldor were destined to enter Middle
Earth regardless of the Silmarils, but the fact is, they entered
Middle Earth BECAUSE of the Silmarils, according to an oath which was
bound to the very fiber of Arda. They were admonished not to do this,
and they did. Everything that follows is a disaster, and not just for
them, but for the men, and for the Avari as well. The Silmarillion is
a tale of the triumph of the lies of Morgoth.
But the one thing that the Eldar give to Middle Earth are the union of
men and elves. (The union of Beren and Luthien, arguably, is
exceptionak even here, because it did not involve the Noldor, although
their descendants mixed with the Noldor). Between the Silmarillion
and LOTR, this joining of Elves and Men lies fallow, so to speak.
Although the Eldar in Middle Earth fight the long defeat through many
ages, it is still a defeat. I would argue this is because the Eldar
are not capable of preserving anything in Middle Earth, they aren't
supposed to be there. Galadriel doesn't just refuse the Ring, she
keeps out of the War of the Ring altogether, as does Elrond. Why?
Because they have learned their lesson. The resolution to the
disaster of Oath of Feanor lies with mortals, not with the Eldar, who
started something they were incapable of finishing (rather like
Tolkien in relation to his Silm).
Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal as
everything else, because he uses his powers to shape ends against the
rules, rather than merely guiding and persuading.
But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
Aman. Like Luthien, she offers herself for love, not for the ruinous
oath of her forebears. She takes on death, because that is the fate
of things in Middle Earth. The Silmarillion is a tale of loss because
the lies of Morgoth were the essence of the Noldor's arrival there.
The defeat of Morgoth/Sauron comes with the acceptance by the First
Born that Middle Earth is ruled not by their greatness, their wisdom
or their beauty, but by those who were given the Gift of Illuvatar.
Inside all of this, there is a connection with Christian theology,
although I think it labors the point, and I am not good at drawing the
connections. But a quotation from Paul comes to mind "For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Acceptance of
death is fundamental to redemption.
Tolkien's "life's blood" can be taken to mean (not absolutely, but
speculatively) that LOTR is the completion of the Silmarillion. He
may not have finished the beginning, but he finished the ending. Given
how difficult it was for him to finish things, it was an
accomplishment indeed. Like Yavanna's trees, Feanor's Jewels, even
Sauron's Ring, there was so much of Tolkien's self in LOTR that
nothing of them could be changed or taken away without taking his
blood.
On 30 Aug 2006 13:08:07 -0700, "Belba Grubb"
Stan Brown
<donal...@verizon.net>:
> I will be a daring newbie. Not only respond, but take a few risks...
One of which, apparently, is posting upside down. Please don't.
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/unice.htm#upside
> It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
> could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
> it ever so scattered) begins.
True. I believe somewhere Tolken himself says that LotR is a sequel,
not to /The Hobbit/ a had been requested by Unwin, but to the
unpublished Silm.
> Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal as
> everything else, because he uses his powers to shape ends against the
> rules, rather than merely guiding and persuading.
I cannot agree with this statement. Neither Saruman nor Sauron (nor
Morgoth, come to that) ever became mortal. They were immortal in
their very nature.
They could have a body killed, and that seriously weakened and
inconvenienced them, but in time they could rebuild. They were
unhoused when their body was killed, but they themselves were not
killed.
> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
> Aman. ... She takes on death, because that is the fate
> of things in Middle Earth.
Sorry, but no. The Elves in Middle-earth did not have death as their
fate. Arwen's father had chosen to be of Elven-kind. She herself was
given the choice, and she chose to be mortal. She could just as well
have chosen to stay with the Elves, in which case she need not have
died.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
http://users.telerama.com/~taliesen/tolkien/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm
Donald Grove
>Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:19:59 GMT from Donald Grove
><donal...@verizon.net>:
>
>> Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal as
>> everything else, because he uses his powers to shape ends against the
>> rules, rather than merely guiding and persuading.
>
Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>I cannot agree with this statement. Neither Saruman nor Sauron (nor
>Morgoth, come to that) ever became mortal. They were immortal in
>their very nature.
>
>They could have a body killed, and that seriously weakened and
>inconvenienced them, but in time they could rebuild. They were
>unhoused when their body was killed, but they themselves were not
>killed.
>
I guess that is true. At the end of ROTK it isn't really clear what
happens to Saruman. A mist rises from his body, appears to make some
kind of supplication to the West, and then is blown away by the wind.
Perhaps it was one last ounce of Saurman's power squeezing out one
last embodiment before being completely unhoused. I rather got the
impression that this was death.
>> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
>> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
>> Aman. ... She takes on death, because that is the fate
>> of things in Middle Earth.
>
>Sorry, but no. The Elves in Middle-earth did not have death as their
>fate. Arwen's father had chosen to be of Elven-kind. She herself was
>given the choice, and she chose to be mortal. She could just as well
>have chosen to stay with the Elves, in which case she need not have
>died.
Yes, absolutely she could have chosen to stay with the elves. But she
chose death, which was precisely my point. What is it that you
disagree with. Her choice of death is the fulfillment the resolves
the several millenia of disaster that plagued Middle Earth and the
Noldor as a result of the Oath of Feanor.
Dea....@gmail.com
Donald Grove wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:19:55 -0400,
>
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> >....I guess that is true. At the end of ROTK it isn't really clear what
> happens to Saruman. A mist rises from his body, appears to make some
> kind of supplication to the West, and then is blown away by the wind.
> Perhaps it was one last ounce of Saurman's power squeezing out one
> last embodiment before being completely unhoused. I rather got the
> impression that this was death.
I thought it was perfectly clear: that was the Valar overturning the
natural order (according to which Sauruman would have been reincarnated
in Oversea) by utterly ending his existence. But that is unique in
Tolkien's world. The Silmarillion says that men have an afterlife
different from Elves reserved for them and that the Elves don't know
what it is, but that doesn't seem like something one would say about
oblivion. Surely he was hinting at soemthing like the Christian heaven?
>
> >> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
> >> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
> >> Aman. ... She takes on death, because that is the fate
> >> of things in Middle Earth.
> >
> >Sorry, but no. The Elves in Middle-earth did not have death as their
> >fate. Arwen's father had chosen to be of Elven-kind. She herself was
> >given the choice, and she chose to be mortal. She could just as well
> >have chosen to stay with the Elves, in which case she need not have
> >died.
>
> Yes, absolutely she could have chosen to stay with the elves. But she
> chose death, which was precisely my point. What is it that you
> disagree with. Her choice of death is the fulfillment the resolves
> the several millenia of disaster that plagued Middle Earth and the
> Noldor as a result of the Oath of Feanor.
When I first read the book (in middleSchool) I thought that she made
that choice becuase it was a precondition for wedding a human being.
But that is obviously not the case. She must have wanted to share the
unknown with Aragorn rather than to live on for eternity without him.
Does anyone recall off hand whether there was anything outre about the
after-life/ death of Beren and Luthien?
Donald Grove
<Dea....@gmail.com> wrote:
>Does anyone recall off hand whether there was anything outre about the
>after-life/ death of Beren and Luthien?
Well, yes, depending on how you mean outre. The solution is certainly
very legalistic. The case of Beren required special pleading by
Luthien with Mandos. He is moved, but mortal spirits are not
something he can retrieve. The case is referred to Manwe, who, after
pondering the will of Iluvatar, reveals that either he or some other
power CAN retrieve Beren's spirit, but without any promise of joy.
Luthien takes him up on this.
The curiousity here is that the decision is justified because of
Luthien's "labours and sorrow." It seems rather particular on the
part of the Valar that Luthien's labours and sorrow were more
significant than, say, Hurin Thalion's or Finrod Felagund's labours
and sorrow. Why should Beleg Cuthalion have remained in the halls of
Mandos after all his labours and sorrows, just because of a grotesque
accident.
Yes, Luthien acted admirably, seducing Morgoth himself, aiding in the
rescue of a Silmaril, etc. But she was doing this for love of Beren,
not with any high-minded notions about the doom of Arda or bringing
down Morgoth. In fact, all she was doing was assisting Beren in
carrying out the preposterous bride price set by her father. In the
meantime, all kinds of Elves and Mortals had substantial labours and
sorrows.
I would emphasize that the entire misadventure of the Silmarils and
the Oath of Feanor could only be resolved by this union of Elves and
Men. So it is possible that the special dispensation was made so that
Luthien could bear a child???
Troels Forchhammer
Donald Grove <donal...@verizon.net> enriched us with:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:19:55 -0400,
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>
>> Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:19:59 GMT from Donald Grove
>> <donal...@verizon.net>:
>>>
>>> Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal
>>> as everything else,
>>
>> I cannot agree with this statement. Neither Saruman nor Sauron
>> (nor Morgoth, come to that) ever became mortal. They were immortal
>> in their very nature.
>>
>> They could have a body killed, and that seriously weakened and
>> inconvenienced them, but in time they could rebuild. They were
>> unhoused when their body was killed, but they themselves were not
>> killed.
>
> I guess that is true. At the end of ROTK it isn't really clear
> what happens to Saruman. A mist rises from his body, appears to
> make some kind of supplication to the West, and then is blown away
> by the wind. Perhaps it was one last ounce of Saurman's power
> squeezing out one last embodiment before being completely
> unhoused. I rather got the impression that this was death.
I agree that it isn't really clear within the context of /The Lord of
the Rings/ itself -- it isn't clear either that Gandalf, Saruman and
Radagast are angelic beings of the same order as Sauron.
Saruman's end, however, is a very close image of Sauron's, except that
where the mist rising from Saruman's corpse petitions "the West" (the
Valar, which are only mentioned directly a few times in the book),
Sauron made a threatening gesture. In the end, however, the smoke-
figures are both blown away (to nothing) by a wind out of the west
(that should probably be capitalized: the West, implying the Undying
Lands, the Blessed Realm, Aman).
The close similarities between the visual effects of the end of Sauron
and the end of Saruman implies, I think, that the similarities go
beyond that. Gandalf describes Sauron's fate in the event of the
destruction of the One Ring:
[...] and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere
spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but
cannot again grow or take shape.
[LotR V,9 'The Last Debate']
It is reasonable, I'd say, even within the context of LotR only, to
assume that Saruman's fate would be similar.
The next thing is whether this constitutes his 'death'? Here the
problem is rather that 'death' can mean too many things in Tolkien's
world, concerned as he was with Mortality and Immortality. Elves are
immortal, but they can nevertheless die. When they die, their spirits
are summoned to 'Mandos' in Valinor (the Blessed Realm), where it,
after some indefinite period of waiting (a purgatory period) will be
'rehoused' -- i.e. a new body will be created by the Valar: an exact
copy of the body the spirit remembers (the exception to this rule is
the real baddies who are not allowed to be rehoused).
Men, however, are mortal, and when they are killed their spirit
(possibly after some indefinite period -- here both Beren and the Army
of the Dead come to mind) leaves "the Circles of the World". Their
death is, in other words, described in a way that is consistent with
Christian thought.
The Ainur are, by default, not corporeal. Their true being is pure
spirit, but they have the ability to 'clothe' or 'array' themselves in
a body (it is compared to the way we put on clothes). How, then, should
we treat the killing of the body in which an Ainu has arrayed himself?
If we use the Elven case as our guide, it is definitely meaningful to
say that it constitutes the death of the Ainu (in that particular
embodiment), but basing the case on the simile with clothing, it is as
meaningful to describe it as a death as it would be to call a human
death who has had their clothes burned off their body . . .
Finally the ends of both Sauron and Saruman are similar to the death of
a human in that they will never again be able to become embodied.
Ultimately I agree that there are ways to meaningfully call the end of
Saruman his death, but one needs, of course, to be aware that it is not
entirely a death in the human sense (as is also the case for the
Elves).
<snip>
> Yes, absolutely she could have chosen to stay with the elves. But
> she chose death, which was precisely my point. What is it that
> you disagree with.
As I understood Sam's point, it was that death was not the fate of
/all/ things in Middle-earth (I don't know if that was what you
intended, but it was the impression I got, even if you didn't use the
word 'all'). There are 'things' that are deathless, and the Elves is
one example of that (although their eventual fate in Middle-earth is to
fade as their spirit consume their bodies, but that is a different
discussion altogether).
On the other hand, all things in Middle-earth are doomed to diminish
and eventually to fade -- that applies to the United Kingdom of King
Elessar as much as to the Elves or the Ents. Possibly Tom Bombadil is
an exception, though even he would not, I think, be able to survive the
covering of all of England with concrete.
> Her choice of death is the fulfillment the resolves the several
> millenia of disaster that plagued Middle Earth and the Noldor
> as a result of the Oath of Feanor.
I don't think so. The rule of King Elessar and Queen Evenstar provided
a new beginning -- it ensured that as much as possible of what was good
about the past was remembered and honoured -- that the Elves, Hobbits,
Ents, Orcs etc. were not completely forgotten in the new Age of Men,
but they did /not/ offer any salvation or resolution of the Marring of
Arda -- this becomes painfully obvious with Tolkien's abandoned attempt
at a sequel to LotR. Set some years after the death of King Elessar, it
would have displayed that Men were still fallen and Arda still marred:
Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we
should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of
their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the
people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity,
would become discontented and restless - while the dynasts
descended from Aragorn would become just kings and
governors - like Denethor or worse. I found that even so
early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a
centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys
were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage.
[J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #256 to Colin Bailey 13 May 1964]
I am reminded of the story of Frode Fredegod (King Fródi -- the
Latinized version of which is Frotho or Frodo), during whose reign the
realm had peace, fertility and prosperity, but upon his death the peace
ended (in one version his men would drive his corpse around to keep the
peace and wealth, but when his corpse rotted, the peace and prosperity
was over).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%B3%C3%B0i>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotte>
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
- Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.
Troels Forchhammer
"Shanahan" <pog...@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:Xns9833E312...@130.133.1.4...
>>
<snip>
>> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement
>> etc.) associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses
>> associated with fighting a war which is meaningless and, though
>> they are fighting Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a
>> people, not of a person . . .
>
> Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than
> personal re the author.
Precisely -- and to an even greater extent re the narrator, I think. It
is the mediation through the personal narrator that brings the story
down to eye level -- of course it's a difficult distinction to make
when the narrator is also one of the characters in the story, but I
think it comes down to the very personalised narratives in LotR (and,
to a lesser degree, /The Hobbit/).
The narrative viewpoint in LotR is much different from that in the Silm
-- in the former we get much closer to the emotions and thoughts of the
characters, and the anachronistic aspects of the hobbits telling the
story helps us identify with the narrator (we can appreciate just how
far out his depth Bilbo was when he found himself facing three trolls,
or alone in the caves of the goblins).
> Had we been given the story from Fëanor's POV, perhaps the sense
> of loss (which I agree is associated with the Fall of the Elves,
> and by extrapolation our Fall as well) would feel more personal.
Yes, I think so, though it would, I believe, also have changed the
nature of the loss: it would have been the personal loss of his mother
and his father and his greatest work that would have dominated the
story.
> It makes me wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had
> finished (re)writing Galadriel's history. He was setting her up
> for a terribly noble role in the drama of the First Age, and had
> enormous sympathy for her character.
I wonder with you ;)
I agree about the role she was being set up for -- there are strong
hints in e.g. the idea that she left Valinor independently of the
Noldorin rebellion. (I have also wondered to what extent the remake of
Galadriel's role was influenced by readers seeing in her a reference to
Virgin Mary).
But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was being set
up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too good to be true
-- too noble for the reader to identify with easily.
> Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could read the Silm. tales through
> Galadriel's eyes?
It would definitely -- although as an addition to the tales (I wouldn't
like to loose the 'high' tales).
>> In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
>> single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
>> seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note)
>> also concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of
>> the old world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit
>> allows a peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of
>> loss brought down from the high and translated into something we
>> can identify with (the hobbit viewpoint).
>
> And it works so beautifully. The Silm. tales would have felt much
> "lower" if you will, if seen through the eyes of a fallen Elf, or
> a Man: and so 'felt' much less mythic.
<enthusiastically> Exactly! </enthusiastically>
The narrative and emotional viewpoints of myths have become
impersonalized so that the viewpoint can be that of a whole people
reflecting, identifying and confirming themselves in the myth. The
mythical heroes are not personal heroes, but cultural heroes.
This is probably most obviously in pantheistic myth, where the story is
focused about the doings of divine beings, but it is also present in
heroic myth (there's a gradual transition from myth via legend and saga
to the exaggerated stories of historical heroes, but here I'm concerned
about the mythical end of that spectrum).
In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
representations of forces and nations, removing to a large extent the
personal aspect of their deeds (except where the personal can be
generalized, representing the 'proper' or 'typical' reaction of someone
belonging to the ethnic group represented by that character).
> Which wouldn't have served Tolkien's purpose in writing the tales,
> I imagine.
Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always intended to be
mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been served by the
personalized stories.
> And that brings us back to Barb's question, because it indicates
> that the "life blood" that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was
> spilled intentionally: he meant to make LotR personal, and the
> mythos and ancient history less so.
Yes. And the personal view-point ultimately had to come from himself,
hence, I suspect, the feeling that he put 'more of himself' into LotR
(though obviously he put at least as much effort and agonizing into the
development of the mythology). There's the idea of an author 'writing
it out' -- writing as a psycho-therapeutical tool; in LotR Tolkien was
capable of 'writing it out' at a more intimate level than what he was
(generally) in the Silmarillion, precisely because LotR had the more
personal and intimate narrative viewpoint.
> As the Count said in many fewer words, "a lot of what is going on
> is the fading and loss of the mythical and legendary worlds into
> mere 'history'".
Yes indeed.
> But it couldn't have been done in any other way, or the myths and
> legends would have read too 'low'.
Agreed.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom
of thought which they avoid.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Raven
news:1157549100....@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I thought it was perfectly clear: that was the Valar overturning the
> natural order (according to which Sauruman would have been reincarnated
> in Oversea) by utterly ending his existence.
In Tolkien's subcreation the spirit is the person, whether housed in a
body or not. To Elves the natural state is that the spirit is housed in a
body, for as long as Arda endures, while to Men the severance of the spirit
and the body and the decomposition of the latter is the natural occurrence,
once the Man has lived out his natural lifetime. For the Ainur the case is
more complex. The greatest of the Ainur, such as the Valar, can house
themselves if they so choose. Or they can walk unhoused, ie. without a
body. They can put on a body as a raiment, and shed it when they choose to.
Eg. Yavanna may incarnate herself as a tree, because she loves trees. For
other occasions she can appear as a person, a Queen of great majesty. But
if an Ainu inhabits a body for long, and does certain things with it, he or
she will become increasingly bound to it. One of these things is to commit
evil. Melkor was originally able to build and shed a body at will like the
rest of the Valar, but when he committed the evil of destroying the Two
Trees, he became finally bound to his body beyond even his vast power to
shed it like a garment, or to change its appearance at will. After that,
while he still lived (ie. inhabited his body), it remained a hideous and
terrifying one, echoing the disposition of Morgoth.
Sauron likewise became bound to his body. And the Istari, including
Saruman and Gandalf, voluntarily took on bodies that they would be bound to,
as a prerequisite for the mission given them by the Valar.
All spirits are immortal. Ilúvatar does not destroy spirits, and nothing
else even remotely has the power to do so. An evil power may break or
corrupt a spirit, but not unmake it.
Sauron died thrice, in that the body that he had formed and had become
bound to beyond its being mere raiment and tool was violently destroyed.
Twice he reincarnated, becoming diminished as he spent some of his innate
power on building a new body for himself without help. The first time he
managed it swiftly, because he had his Ring, the second time much more
slowly, because it was not with him. Both times the body that he formed was
not according to his choice, but echoed by necessity his disposition: a
great, commanding, hideous and terrifying figure - and the second time with
one finger missing. He was still mighty enough to form a new body for
himself, but no longer mighty enough to shape it at will: he could no longer
appear as a beautiful and majestic figure as when he cheated the Mírdain in
the shape of Annatar. The third time his body perished the Ring, which had
aided his reincarnation by having part of him in it, was unmade, and he
became too weak to ever reincarnate again. He became an impotent spirit,
ever gnawing itself in powerless anger and hate in the shadows. Only with
the help of the Valar or Ilúvatar could he have become rehoused, and they
would be unlikely to help ---
When Saruman was killed by Gríma, the body that he had become bound to
was destroyed and could no longer house his spirit. He did not have
sufficient power to form a new body, at least for the foreseeable future,
and in this he shared the fate of Sauron. Only with the help of the Valar
(or Ilúvatar, as with Gandalf) could he have become reincarnated. The mist
that rose from his body seems to have been his spirit, his *person* or
*essence*, turning towards the Valar in supplication. But he was rejected:
a wind from the West blew the mist away and dissolved it. But his
immaterial spirit was not unmade.
Wu[1] Ya[1].
Christopher Kreuzer
posts, and so varied as well. I've wanted to chime in with something to say
about it, but have't had time yet. And when I do, I go and write about winds
instead... :-/ Hence the change in the subject line.]
Troels Forchhammer wrote:
<snip>
> Saruman's end, however, is a very close image of Sauron's, except that
> where the mist rising from Saruman's corpse petitions "the West" (the
> Valar, which are only mentioned directly a few times in the book),
> Sauron made a threatening gesture. In the end, however, the smoke-
> figures are both blown away (to nothing) by a wind out of the west
> (that should probably be capitalized: the West, implying the Undying
> Lands, the Blessed Realm, Aman).
Actually, the wind that disperses Sauron's "cloud" is not said to
specifically come from the West, or even the west. [Indeed, further research
(see later) has revealed it was not from the west at all!] But the scene is
so dramatic that this is not immediately apparant:
"Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above
the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with
fire. [...] And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed
to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of
shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it
reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening
hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind
took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell." (The
Field of Cormallen)
I would think the first darkness is a volcanic eruption column of ash,
generating lightning storms and containing glowing, hot materials. Of
course, the second darkness, the "shape of shadow", could simply be a
secondary eruption, but within the story it is intended to be Sauron's
unhousing and dissolution.
There is another point where we read about this wind:
"Then presently it seemed to them that above the ridges of the distant
mountains another vast mountain of darkness rose, towering up like a wave
that should engulf the world, and about it lightnings flickered [...] a
great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out
mingling in the air. And the Shadow departed..." (The Steward and the King)
Interestingly, just moments before this scene, we are told that the wind had
been blowing from the North, before it died away. At least in Minas Tirith:
"It was cold. A wind that had sprung up in the night was blowing now keenly
from the North, and it was rising [...] she [Eowyn] now shivered beneath the
starry mantle, and she looked northward, above the grey hither lands, into
the eye of the cold wind where far away the sky was hard and clear." (The
Steward and the King)
Though this doesn't really help determine which direction the "blowing
Sauron away" wind came from, the fact that they are looking north means that
it makes sense that the wind comes from that direction, otherwise they would
be getting hair in their faces, which wouldn't look that impressive! (I'm
sure I've seen at least one artwork that has their hair blowing in the wrong
direction...) There are also other, more direct clues, and, eventually, an
answer. We have to turn yet again to the fortunes of the two small hobbits
trapped in this maelstrom:
"...even while he spoke so, to keep fear away until the very last, his eyes
still strayed north, north into the eye of the wind, to where the sky far
off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness
and the ruin of the clouds." (The Field of Cormallen)
Or we could just get our information straight from the eagle's mouth! :-)
Gandalf: "...we have need of speed greater than any wind, outmatching the
wings of the Nazgul." Gwaihir: "The North Wind blows, but we shall outfly
it. [...] And so it was that Gwaihir saw them with his keen far-seeing eyes,
as down the wild wind he came [...] daring the great peril of the skies..."
(The Field of Cormallen)
The behaviour of the wind over the past few days of the story is
interesting. Looking back to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, we see that
Aragorn's fleet is wafted up the Anduin by a wind from the Sea (this would
seem to be a south wind, or a south-west wind). Indeed, this is the wind
that starts the metaphorical tide turning:
"Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in
his face! Light was glimmering. Far, far away, in the South the clouds could
be dimly seen as remote grey shapes, rolling up, drifting: morning lay
beyond them." (The Ride of the Rohirrim)
But earlier than this, we see other characters sense this change before
Merry does:
"...suddenly he stood looking up like some startled woodland animal
snuffling a strange air. A light came in his eyes. 'Wind is changing!' he
cried..." (Ghan-buri-Ghan, The Ride of the Rohirrim)
"'Do you remember the Wild Man's words, lord?' said another. 'I live upon
the open Wold in days of peace; Widfara is my name, and to me also the air
brings messages. Already the wind is turning. There comes a breath out of
the South; there is a sea-tang in it, faint though it be. The morning will
bring new things. Above the reek it will be dawn when you pass the wall.'"
(The Ride of the Rohirrim)
This gradual sensing of the change in wind by the characters, from the Wild
Man of the Woods, to the seasoned traveller, to the young Hobbit, is
masterful, subtle storytelling by Tolkien.
What is also really interesting, is how Sam and Frodo see the winds changing
as they leave Cirith Ungol and start out into Mordor:
"The easterly wind that had been blowing ever since they left Ithilien now
seemed dead." (The Land of Shadow)
So already, the tide is turning. Sauron's wind is about to be pushed back.
Over a few key paragraphs, we see Sam and Frodo witness this battle:
"...they both stared in wonder. Away to their left, southward, against a sky
that was turning grey, the peaks and high ridges of the great range began to
appear dark and black, visible shapes. Light was growing behind them. Slowly
it crept towards the North. There was battle far above in the high spaces of
the air. The billowing clouds of Mordor were being driven back, their edges
tattering as a wind out of the living world came up and swept the fumes and
smokes towards the dark land of their home." (The Land of Shadow)
As Sam says:
"The wind's changed. Something's happening. He's not having it all his own
way. His darkness is breaking up out in the world there. I wish I could see
what is going on!" (The Land of Shadow)
Well, Sam can't see what is going on "out there", but Tolkien wastes no time
telling the reader what is happening "out there":
"...the Sun was rising above the eastern shadow, and the south-west wind was
blowing..." (The Land of Shadow)
Later on in the same chapter, we read, "The wind of the world blew now from
the West" and "A strong wind from the West was now driving the fumes of
Mordor from the upper airs."
A few chapters and days further on, we are told: "In the morning a grey
light came again, for in the high regions the West Wind still blew..."
(Mount Doom)
The effect on Sauron is told later in the same chapter: "even in the
fastness of his own realm he sought the secrecy of night, fearing the winds
of the world that had turned against him" (Mount Doom)
Right at the end, as Sam and Frodo prepare for their last desperate struggle
up the slopes of Mount Doom, the final change in the wind is communicated to
the reader:
"The wind had fallen the day before as it shifted from the West, and now it
came from the North and began to rise..." (Mount Doom)
In other words, the initial wind direction was from the east, out of Mordor,
bring the Darkness of Sauron. Then the wind shifted to blow from the south,
beginning to blow away the clouds and allowing dawn to herald the arrival of
the Rohirrim at Pelennor. Then the wind continues shifting round the
compass, blowing south-west as Aragorn and his fleet arrive at Pelennor. The
wind then settles into a strong West wind that continues to blow away the
clouds of Mordor for a few days. Then, at the climax of the story, the wind
swings round again, to blow from the final compass direction, from the
North. This completes a circle of wind directions. Does anyone know if the
wind acts like this often in the real world?
Going back to the descriptions of the winds in Mordor (as seen by Frodo and
Sam), compare them with the descriptions of the winds back in Minas Tirith:
"The morning came after the day of battle, and it was fair with light clouds
and the wind turning westward" (The Last Debate)
And as the Army of the Captains of the West marches to the Black Gate:
"The weather of the world remained fair and the wind held in the west" (The
Black Gate Opens)
Both these passages show the same weather as we see Sam and Frodo
experiencing in Mordor. As the Army actually approaches the gate:
"As morning came the wind began to stir again, but now it came from the
North, and soon it freshened to a rising breeze." (The Black Gate Opens)
This corresponds with the moment when Sam and Frodo feel a wind from the
North as they are on the slopes of Mount Doom. And finally, although this
wind from the North is not strictly a wind from the West, it does bear with
it the deus ex machinae, the agents of the Lords of the West, the Eagles!
They come, "from the northern mountains, speeding on a gathering wind." (The
Field of Cormallen)
Incidentially, a north wind makes great sense to blow the ash and
destruction away from the Army of the West, who are north of Mount Doom, and
allows the Eagles to go in and rescue Frodo and Sam in relative safety (as
opposed to flying in from the south, against the wind and the ash).
But moving away from such mundane matters, if you want a really strong
candidate for a wind from the West, how about this scene here, where Aragorn
heals the Lady Eowyn:
"...it seemed to those who stood by that a keen wind blew through the
window, and it bore no scent, but was an air wholly fresh and clean and
young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came
new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores
of silver far away washed by seas of foam." (The Houses of Healing)
The "seas of foam" bit recalls Bilbo's song of Earendil in Rivendell ("until
he heard on strands of pearl / when ends the world the music long, / where
ever foaming billows roll
/ the yellow gold and jewels wan."). And Galadriel's song of Eldamar and
Valinor has interesting bits about winds and seas of foam. Undoubtedly, the
implication of the "snowy mountain" (Taniquetil) and "dome of stars"
(Elbereth imagery) and "shores of silver", is that the wind has come from
Aman, from the Land of the Blessed, the Land of the Deathless.
Getting back to what you said, way up there at the beginning of the post...
:-) , the similarity of Sauron's "death scene" with Saruman's is indeed very
striking:
"To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist
gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a
pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered,
looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away,
and with a sigh dissolved into nothing." (The Scouring of the Shire)
> The close similarities between the visual effects of the end of Sauron
> and the end of Saruman implies, I think, that the similarities go
> beyond that. Gandalf describes Sauron's fate in the event of the
> destruction of the One Ring:
>
> [...] and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere
> spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but
> cannot again grow or take shape.
> [LotR V,9 'The Last Debate']
>
> It is reasonable, I'd say, even within the context of LotR only, to
> assume that Saruman's fate would be similar.
I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
_interesting_! :-)
Christopher
Christopher Kreuzer
> "Shanahan" <pog...@bluefrog.com> enriched us with more great stuff:
<snip>
>> And that brings us back to Barb's question, because it indicates
>> that the "life blood" that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was
>> spilled intentionally: he meant to make LotR personal, and the
>> mythos and ancient history less so.
>
> Yes. And the personal view-point ultimately had to come from himself,
> hence, I suspect, the feeling that he put 'more of himself' into LotR
> (though obviously he put at least as much effort and agonizing into
> the development of the mythology). There's the idea of an author
> 'writing it out' -- writing as a psycho-therapeutical tool; in LotR
> Tolkien was capable of 'writing it out' at a more intimate level than
> what he was (generally) in the Silmarillion, precisely because LotR
> had the more personal and intimate narrative viewpoint.
See what I mean? Some great stuff in this thread. :-)
And I'm very annoyed that I don't have time to repond in detail.
As I said to someone else recently: Auta i lómë! (The Night is Passing).
(And I need to get to bed and then to pack for my holiday!)
Christopher
Shanahan
> In message <news:edg3...@enews2.newsguy.com>
> "Shanahan" <pog...@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
>> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
>> news:Xns9833E312...@130.133.1.4...
<snip>
> but I think it comes down to the very personalised narratives in LotR
> (and, to a lesser degree, /The Hobbit/).
> The narrative viewpoint in LotR is much different from that in the
> Silm -- in the former we get much closer to the emotions and thoughts
> of the characters, and the anachronistic aspects of the hobbits
> telling the story helps us identify with the narrator (we can
> appreciate just how far out his depth Bilbo was when he found himself
> facing three trolls, or alone in the caves of the goblins).
Yes. The anachronisms are stronger in TH (clocks, umbrellas, worries
about handkerchiefs and What Will The Neighbors Think) than in LotR,
which works both for and against it as a story, I think--as you say,
they help the reader identify with Bilbo, and also to laugh at him in a
genial, self-deprecating manner. It's especially effective when placed
in direct contrast to the 'higher', old-world patterns: Thorin's
deathbed farewell to Bilbo, "child of the Kindly West", springs to mind.
Or in RotK, in Merry and Aragorn's exchange in the Houses of Healing
"may the Shire live forever unwithered!"
The technique also, sometimes, pulls me out of the story, more in TH
than LotR. It can break the spell.
In Silm., the anachronisms are of a wholly different kind: they're
story-external, if those're the right words to use. They're archaic to
the reader's times, and so they serve to pull us from our own world to
the mythical one. As the narrative POV does. Tolkien was a hell of a
craftsman.
<snip>
> But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
> figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was being set
> up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too good to be true
> -- too noble for the reader to identify with easily.
That occurrs to me too. She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great,
too far away to be real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any
lass I've ever seen in springtime with daisies in her hair". Yet if she
carried the narrative POV, Tolkien might have been able to switch
between a 'high' voice and a 'lower' one, perhaps. Her character might
have been able to carry both voices with equal authenticity.
<snip mucho eloquence from both of us>
> The narrative and emotional viewpoints of myths have become
> impersonalized so that the viewpoint can be that of a whole people
> reflecting, identifying and confirming themselves in the myth. The
> mythical heroes are not personal heroes, but cultural heroes.
Or, Jungian archetypes, perhaps? <wink>
> This is probably most obviously in pantheistic myth, where the story
> is focused about the doings of divine beings, but it is also present
> in heroic myth (there's a gradual transition from myth via legend and
> saga to the exaggerated stories of historical heroes, but here I'm
> concerned about the mythical end of that spectrum).
Dude, now you're talkin' my language!
> In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
> representations of forces and nations, removing to a large extent the
> personal aspect of their deeds (except where the personal can be
> generalized, representing the 'proper' or 'typical' reaction of
> someone belonging to the ethnic group represented by that character).
<snip>
> Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always intended to
> be mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been served by the
> personalized stories.
Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's (early)
stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was it ever
achievable? Can a mythology be written for a people by one man, or does
that invalidate the whole enterprise? Must a mythology spring up
spontaneously, in order to be valid--boil up on its own out of the Soup,
if you will.
Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults, define
the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and a set of
values to that culture, structure and create the universe for them. They
are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the cultural mind.
Does /The Silmarillion/, even in its edited and elided form, do any of
that for Western, or even English, culture? Would it, if JRRT had
finished it? Does LotR? (Jaysus and the Virgin forfend, does Joyce's
/Ulysses/?)
*(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth version, I
think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just as stories.
Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they were.)
>> And that brings us back to Barb's question, because it indicates
>> that the "life blood" that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was
>> spilled intentionally: he meant to make LotR personal, and the
>> mythos and ancient history less so.
>
> Yes. And the personal view-point ultimately had to come from himself,
> hence, I suspect, the feeling that he put 'more of himself' into LotR
> (though obviously he put at least as much effort and agonizing into
> the development of the mythology). There's the idea of an author
> 'writing it out' -- writing as a psycho-therapeutical tool; in LotR
> Tolkien was capable of 'writing it out' at a more intimate level than
> what he was (generally) in the Silmarillion, precisely because LotR
> had the more personal and intimate narrative viewpoint.
So, Barb, how do you react to all this?
Shanahan
> I will be a daring newbie. Not only respond, but take a few risks...
Well done. <g>
<snip>
> Although the Eldar in Middle Earth fight the long defeat through many
> ages, it is still a defeat. I would argue this is because the Eldar
> are not capable of preserving anything in Middle Earth, they aren't
> supposed to be there.
Interesting! A couple of things occur to me: first, Tolkien calls the
whole motivation of 'preserving things' into moral question; so maybe
the enterprise is doomed because it is flawed at the root. The Elves
most definitely want to preserve ME as it is, in all its beauty and
power, and the Three are forged with that goal in mind. But it's an
unrealistic and unachievable goal, and it cuts off the possibility of
growth.
Second, I'm not sure about whether they're supposed to be in Aman or ME.
There are some strong hints that the Valar made a serious mistake when
they invited the Eldar into Aman in the first place. They seem to think
so, at least, and decide to withdraw from that degree of intervention as
time draws on.
<snip>
> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
> Aman. Like Luthien, she offers herself for love, not for the ruinous
> oath of her forebears. She takes on death, because that is the fate
> of things in Middle Earth.
I like that interpretation.
<snip>
> Tolkien's "life's blood" can be taken to mean (not absolutely, but
> speculatively) that LOTR is the completion of the Silmarillion. He
> may not have finished the beginning, but he finished the ending. Given
> how difficult it was for him to finish things, it was an
> accomplishment indeed. Like Yavanna's trees, Feanor's Jewels, even
> Sauron's Ring, there was so much of Tolkien's self in LOTR that
> nothing of them could be changed or taken away without taking his
> blood.
Putting it in 'Leaf by Niggle' terms, does that leave us (who are trying
to fill in the gaps in the canvas) in Parrish's role?
Shanahan
> On 6 Sep 2006 06:25:01 -0700, "Dea....@gmail.com"
> <Dea....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone recall off hand whether there was anything outre about
>> the after-life/ death of Beren and Luthien?
> The curiosity here is that the decision is justified because of
> Luthien's "labours and sorrow." It seems rather particular on the
> part of the Valar that Luthien's labours and sorrow were more
> significant than, say, Hurin Thalion's or Finrod Felagund's labours
> and sorrow. Why should Beleg Cuthalion have remained in the halls of
> Mandos after all his labours and sorrows, just because of a grotesque
> accident.
It seems to me that she is able to move Mandos and other Valar because:
a) She sings really, really well.
b) She's really, really beautiful.
(Always kinda bugged me.)
Dirk Thierbach
>> But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
>> figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was being set
>> up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too good to be true
>> -- too noble for the reader to identify with easily.
> That occurrs to me too.
Yes, it would have been a great danger. Like the alternative, longer
ending of the LotR, which he fortunately dropped.
> She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great, too far away to be
> real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any lass I've ever
> seen in springtime with daisies in her hair".
Yes. I think that's one of the descriptions that has shaped my image
of Galadriel most: Like a young girl and awe-inspiring at the same time.
So I'd say in the LotR she's very much real.
> Yet if she carried the narrative POV, Tolkien might have been able
> to switch between a 'high' voice and a 'lower' one, perhaps.
I am not sure if it would have been a good idea to give her the
narrative POV. It works great in the movies (they should have used
this idea more often), but I cannot see it working for the whole SIL.
>> In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
>> representations of forces and nations, removing to a large extent the
>> personal aspect of their deeds (except where the personal can be
>> generalized, representing the 'proper' or 'typical' reaction of
>> someone belonging to the ethnic group represented by that character).
> <snip>
>> Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always intended to
>> be mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been served by the
>> personalized stories.
I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very well.
Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's (early)
> stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was it ever
> achievable?
I'd say he came pretty close.
> Can a mythology be written for a people by one man, or does
> that invalidate the whole enterprise? Must a mythology spring up
> spontaneously, in order to be valid--boil up on its own out of the Soup,
> if you will.
I don't think it must spring up "spontanously". And in any case,
Tolkien seems to have imitated the process rather well.
> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
> Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults, define
> the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and a set of
> values to that culture, structure and create the universe for them. They
> are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the cultural mind.
Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths carry
some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't necessarily
define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries. Though they
can of course help structure the world.
> Does /The Silmarillion/, even in its edited and elided form, do any of
> that for Western, or even English, culture? Would it, if JRRT had
> finished it? Does LotR?
I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above sense
because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride, sacrifice,
love. And both, the LotR IMHO even more than the SIL, do that in
a style I would characterize as "English". So in this sense, both
are a "Mythology for England".
Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.
> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth version, I
> think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just as stories.
> Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they were.)
Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he tries
to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative world
that would have been really possible instead of "just a story".
- Dirk
Dirk Thierbach
Great explanation, I'd just like to nitpick on a few details:
> Sauron died thrice, in that the body that he had formed and had become
> bound to beyond its being mere raiment and tool was violently destroyed.
> Twice he reincarnated, becoming diminished as he spent some of his innate
> power on building a new body for himself without help. The first time he
> managed it swiftly, because he had his Ring,
Or because he still had enough "power" (or whatever one could call it)
left to embody himself quickly.
> the second time much more slowly, because it was not with him.
Or because he now had less "power" left to build himself, having lost
now too much "power" by dying twice.
I am not really sure if the presence or absence of the Ring really
influenced his ability to embody himself. The main purpose of the
Ring, after all, was to rule others.
> The third time his body perished the Ring, which had aided his
> reincarnation by having part of him in it, was unmade, and he became
> too weak to ever reincarnate again.
And the way I understand it, that's because he had externalized some
of his "power" by making the Ring, so he could never loose that part
as long the Ring existed. (Similar to the fairy story "The Cold
Heart", where the protagonist puts his heart into a glass jar and
cannot die as long as this jar stays hidden). So without the Ring
being destroyed, he would always be able to embody himself again (no
matter if the Ring was in his possession or not), though maybe every
time more slowly.
> When Saruman was killed by Gríma, the body that he had become bound to
> was destroyed and could no longer house his spirit. He did not have
> sufficient power to form a new body,
Maybe the reason is that Istari were already restricted in their "power"
when they were sent to middle-earth: They were "incarnated" and bound
firmly to their bodies.
- Dirk
Dirk Thierbach
> I would think the first darkness is a volcanic eruption column of ash,
> generating lightning storms and containing glowing, hot materials. Of
> course, the second darkness, the "shape of shadow", could simply be a
> secondary eruption, but within the story it is intended to be Sauron's
> unhousing and dissolution.
And it's again a mix of a natural phenomenon (a volcanic eruption)
with a second layer of "personalized" meaning, like the trees in the
old forest, or the snow at Caradhras.
[...]
> In other words, the initial wind direction was from the east, out of Mordor,
> bring the Darkness of Sauron. Then the wind shifted to blow from the south,
> beginning to blow away the clouds and allowing dawn to herald the arrival of
> the Rohirrim at Pelennor. Then the wind continues shifting round the
> compass, blowing south-west as Aragorn and his fleet arrive at Pelennor. The
> wind then settles into a strong West wind that continues to blow away the
> clouds of Mordor for a few days. Then, at the climax of the story, the wind
> swings round again, to blow from the final compass direction, from the
> North. This completes a circle of wind directions. Does anyone know if the
> wind acts like this often in the real world?
I'm not an expert in meteorology, but if there was a stable high
pressure area to the north, there'd be wind from the east for some
time. Then, when the high becomes unstable, the wind would die out,
and with the high gone, now a depression could move in. Depressions
move usually to the east in the northern hemisphere, and if this
depression would pass to the north then turn a little bit to the
south, you'd first get winds from SW, turning to W and finally NW and,
after the depression has move southwards and is now to the east, a wind
from the north.
So it looks plausible.
- Dirk
Derek Broughton
> I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
> _interesting_! :-)
>
I stand in awe! I wouldn't have thought there was nearly so much
interesting wind-lore in those few chapters. Thank you.
--
derek
Troels Forchhammer
"Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> enriched us with:
> [This "Life's blood versus life's work" thread is great - some
> really great posts, and so varied as well. I've wanted to chime in
> with something to say about it, but have't had time yet. And when
> I do, I go and write about winds instead... :-/ Hence the change
> in the subject line.]
So, now we're getting long-winded and putting on airs . . . ;-)
(sorry -- I found that irrestistible)
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
Saruman and Sauron:
>> In the end, however, the smoke- figures are both blown away
>> (to nothing) by a wind out of the west (that should probably
>> be capitalized: the West,
[...]
>
> Actually, the wind that disperses Sauron's "cloud" is not said to
> specifically come from the West, or even the west.
I shall, of course, maintain that the north-wind was sent by the West
;-)
Your account of the winds is interesting. I've tried to set dates to
it.
Date Wind Frodo & Sam Aragorn
10 East Crossroads Ringló
11 East Stairs Lebennin
12 East Shelob Lebennin
13 East Tower Pelargir
14 E->S Tower River
15 S->S-W Morgai Minas Tirith
16-17 W Morgai The Last Debate
18 W Durthang road Osgiliath-ish
19 W Isenmouthe Morgul vale
20-21 W Road
22 W Due North of
Orodruin
23 W Exit Ithilien
24 W->Still
25 N Mount Doom Morannon
The change from the eastern wind of the first days to the southern
wind is interesting. Story-internally, it is first to commented upon
by "Sea-crafty men of the Ethir gazing southward" (this is in Gimli's
account in "The Last Debate") around midnight, and then by the Drú in
the wee hours (the attack is at dawn, so this must be a couple of
hours before dawn).
<snip>
> This gradual sensing of the change in wind by the characters, from
> the Wild Man of the Woods, to the seasoned traveller, to the young
> Hobbit, is masterful, subtle storytelling by Tolkien.
And then, later in the narrative, but earlier in the chronology, to
be noticed by the sailors in the fleet.
<more snippage>
> The effect on Sauron is told later in the same chapter: "even in
> the fastness of his own realm he sought the secrecy of night,
> fearing the winds of the world that had turned against him" (Mount
> Doom)
Yes. There is a very strong sense in these chapters that the old
adage about sensing what way the wind is blowing (that's an adage in
English as well, isn't it?) becomes literally true: the winds of the
world follow the luck of the war and thus they carry a deeper
signficance than just to blow away the noisome fumes from Orodruin,
or wafting away the insubstantial clouds of Sauron's downfall.
Even allowing for some time before the change would be noticable on
the boats struggling against the current of the Great River, I can't
quite find a good point to declare that this was when it turned. I
would have liked to have the change begin in the far south when
Aragorn took command of the fleet as Isildur's heir, but that would,
I think, be stretching it a bit too far -- the wind seems rather to
start at exactly the right time to allow all the things to happen
that were doomed to happen (including the deaths of Denethor and
Théoden).
But once it has started, it seems to follow the threat Aragorn poses
to Sauron -- first it sweeps his fleet up to Minas Tirith in time to
decisively turn that battle, and then, during the next day, it turns
over to the west (also, in some places, 'the West'). Finally, when
Aragorn reaches the Morannon it dies out, only to start up fresh from
the north the next day. That is two days after Frodo and Sam left the
road due north of Mount Doom.
There is no doubt that the wind-directions are both deliberate and
significant, though that doesn't tell us whether there is, story-
internally, a driving intention (other than Sauron's intention
driving the initial east wind). Such an intention would most likely
be Manwë's, the real "Lord of the West" and the guy with the Eagles
(who came from the Misty Mountains borne by the north wind . . .)
The conclusion that Manwë did, indeed, control the winds, and that
the North-wind was, in that sense, sent by the West, is tempting
(particularly in my situation <G>), but though I find it suggestive,
I cannot, in honesty, say that I find the evidence conclusive.
> But moving away from such mundane matters, if you want a really
> strong candidate for a wind from the West, how about this scene
> here, where Aragorn heals the Lady Eowyn:
Good catch! Thanks.
Though I don't think that this is air carried all the way from the
Blessed Realm by a wind out of the true West, it certainly has a
quality of not only freshness, but of being unsullied and unmarred.
<snip>
>> It is reasonable, I'd say, even within the context of LotR only,
>> to assume that Saruman's fate would be similar.
>
> I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
> _interesting_! :-)
I say, my winds are normally a cause for embarrasment . . .
Sorry -- the actual point was to try to point out just how many
places wind and/or air metaphors are used in idiomatic language. The
English, as we, are a people of sailors and farmers, and to them the
wind and weather are the most important facts of life. What the name
of the King is and whether his tax-collectors collect too much or far
too much is less important than what the weather will be like
tomorrow. We understand the wind metaphors implicitly and Tolkien
makes expert use of them.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
Knowing what
thou knowest not
is in a sense
omniscience
- Piet Hein, /Omniscience/
Troels Forchhammer
<news:2006090708214...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>
> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>
>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>>
[Galadriel as narrator of Silm]
>>> But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
>>> figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was
>>> being set up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too
>>> good to be true -- too noble for the reader to identify with
>>> easily.
<snip>
>> She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great, too far away to
>> be real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any lass
>> I've ever seen in springtime with daisies in her hair".
>
> Yes. I think that's one of the descriptions that has shaped my
> image of Galadriel most: Like a young girl and awe-inspiring at
> the same time.
>
> So I'd say in the LotR she's very much real.
I think that you experience her as closer in LotR than I do. To me
she is portrayed as of a higher kind, though capable of the same
faults as humans. Sam may see her as " as merry as any lass I ever
saw with daisies in her hair in springtime," but that is in the same
breath as recognizing not only that she is far beyond (and above)
him, but also that she embodies a contradiction: she is both "proud
and far-off as a snow-mountain" and the merry lass. The implication,
to me, is that she spans further than normal people can do, and that
this is putting her, again, outside the scope of my ability to
identify.
Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree
in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, small
and slender like. Hard as di'monds, soft as moonlight.
Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and
far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I
ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime. But
that's a lot o' nonsense, and all wide of my mark.
And Sam is still dissatisfied with his ability to describe what he
means ;-)
But she is, indeed, closer to the human condition in LotR, with her
admission of temptation and fallibility, than what she is in the
Silmarillion (both the published version and the source texts), but
she is still, IMO, far removed from the reader. The changes Tolkien
was considering to her role in the Flight of the Noldor (and the
Beleriandric wars) would have removed her even further; her story (if
these changes were introduced) would have become the story of a saint
-- too noble and good for the reader to identify easily with her,
thus once again removing the feeling of seeing eye-to-eye with the
narrator.
>> Yet if she carried the narrative POV, Tolkien might have been
>> able to switch between a 'high' voice and a 'lower' one, perhaps.
I don't think that that would have worked for a narrative viewpoint,
though if anyone could do it, Tolkien would be a likely bid (and
certainly one in a position to disregard all traditional wisdom and
advice about writing -- such as Tolkien did in several cases).
The problem would be to have the reader identify closely with her in
one moment, and then, the next moment, having her remove herself so
far above the reader as to be impossible to understand and identify
with.
> I am not sure if it would have been a good idea to give her the
> narrative POV. It works great in the movies (they should have used
> this idea more often), but I cannot see it working for the whole
> SIL.
And there is the problem of Galadriel's more elevated role evolving
for the Silm. It does work, I agree, in the films, although it also,
IMO, tends to weaken the remoteness and coldness of her character.
The duality, the "balance of opposing forces" that Sam notices is not
really evident in the films, IMO.
>>> In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
>>> representations of forces and nations, removing to a large
>>> extent the personal aspect of their deeds (except where the
>>> personal can be generalized, representing the 'proper' or
>>> 'typical' reaction of someone belonging to the ethnic group
>>> represented by that character).
>> <snip>
>>> Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always
>>> intended to be mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been
>>> served by the personalized stories.
>
> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
it.
Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective scope
in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't think that a
myth can work at the highly personalized level of the narrative voice
and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.
It is, of course, not a matter of hard and fast divisions, but a
gradual transition, but 'myths' belong, I would say, to the end with
the least personalized narrator[#] where there isn't really a
narrator the reader can identify with (there migh be a narrator,
whether overtly or not, but not one that displays the kind of
personal attachment to the story that helps the reader to identify
with the narrator).
[#] Here 'narrator' doesn't necessarily refer to the narrative voice,
but also to the one who carries the narrative viewpoint, such as
Bilbo does in /The Hobbit/, but which doesn't, IMO, occur in /The
Silmarillion/.
I'm currently reading Tom Shippey's /Author of the Century/, and
there are many, very many, places that I find extremely interesting,
and enlightening (not to mention the places where I lean back to note
that he is just exactly right <G>).
Shippey also tries to address the question of what kind of a book
/The Lord of the Rings/ is, citing a division of 'literary modes':
The most comprehensive description we have of literary
modes is that of Northrop Frye, in his book /An Anatomy of
Criticism/, which came out only just after /The Lord of the
Rings/, in 1957. Frye never mentions Tolkien's work in the
/Anatomy/. However, the framework he gives both allows us to
place /The Lord of the Rings/, and to see why it is an
anomaly. In Frye's view, there are five very general
literary modes, defined only by the nature of their
characters. At the top is /myth/: if the characters in a
work are 'superior in kind both to other men and to the
environment of other men', Frye declares, then 'the hero is
a divine being and the story about him sill be a myth'. One
level down is /romance/: here the characters are superior
only in 'degree' (not 'kind') to other men, and again to
their environment. The next level down is /high memesis/,
the level of tragedy or epic, where the heroes and heroines
are 'superior in degree to other men but not to [their]
natural environment'. [...]
[Tom Shippey, /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century/, p. 221]
This definition of myth is probably as good as any (even if the
common dictionary definitions emphasize the explanatory power to the
people the myth belong to ), and one which shows the problem inherent
in attempting to have the personalized narrative viewpoint in a myth;
it requires a protagonist as the narrative focus with whom the reader
can identify, and that is, I'd say, not generally possible for divine
(or semi-divine) characters.
>> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's
>> (early) stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was
>> it ever achievable?
>
> I'd say he came pretty close.
I agree, though it would probably be better to ask the English ;)
Much of it of course depends on what Tolkien actually meant by that
statement. The impression I get from reading Shippey is that he
(Shippey) thinks that he (Tolkien) meant it very much in a
philological sense -- that the whole of Tolkien's writings was
basically driven and inspired by Tolkien's philological views and
interests. In that view, I would say that Tolkien did indeed succeed.
>> Can a mythology be written for a people by one man, or does
>> that invalidate the whole enterprise? Must a mythology spring up
>> spontaneously, in order to be valid--boil up on its own out of
>> the Soup, if you will.
>
> I don't think it must spring up "spontanously".
I don't think that any myth has done that, actually. They have rather
evolved over the ages, being retold from generation to generation
until the original conception was forgot in the traditional mode.
> And in any case, Tolkien seems to have imitated the process rather
> well.
Yes, very well.
> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths
> carry some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't
> necessarily define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries.
> Though they can of course help structure the world.
I think the definition comes very close -- the basic function of
'myth' in a culture is precisely this definition of who 'we' are
(those to whom the myth belong) -- it doesn't matter very much
whether or no they believe the myth to be actual truth.
I agree also with the idea that myths carry some 'truth' (I think I'd
prefer to call it merely 'explanation' <G>), but that is a highly
contextualized truth: one that is valid for that particular people.
Therefore the truth itself is part of the boundary-definition aspect:
it is defining 'us' as those who share this belief, and 'them' as
those who don't.
<snip rest>
Gah! I have more to say, but it will have to wait, as I have to get
ready to get away for the weekend. So I'll address the last couple of
items later.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
simpler.
- Albert Einstein
Shanahan
> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's
>> (early) stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was it
>> ever achievable?
>
> I'd say he came pretty close.
I'd say that LotR succeeded in this regard, but the Silm. tales did not.
(see below)
> And in any case,
> Tolkien seems to have imitated the process rather well.
Oh yes! No argument there! But the question I'm asking is, did the
imitation 'take' -- i.e., is it *functioning* as a myth functions in a
culture?
>> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
>> Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults,
>> define the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and
>> a set of values to that culture, structure and create the universe
>> for them. They are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the
>> cultural mind.
>
> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths carry
> some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't necessarily
> define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries. Though they
> can of course help structure the world.
Perhaps we're using different definitions of 'myth'. You seem to be
leaning towards the common usage of the term, and I towards the academic
usage. For example, English-speakers commonly use the word 'myth' to
describe old stories of the gods, whether Greco-Roman, Norse, Celtic,
tribal, etc. This usage of the word implies that these are ancient tales
which don't carry much modern relevance; although they may express some
truths about universal human nature, they don't really have much to say
about the modern world. To take CS Lewis' phrase, they are "lies
breathed through silver". They do not function as myths for our modern
society. (With the probable exception of the Oedipus/Electra stories,
which do function as living myths, in their retelling by Dr. Sigmund.)
The anthropological definition of myth posits that a true myth, a living
myth if you will, *does* carry strong current meaning for the society
that tells the myth. Otherwise, it's not a myth; it's just an old story.
For example, the myth of the lone, heroic cowboy carries such weight for
modern American society: it defines our cultural identity in many, many
ways, in all its iterations (not always for the best, but that's another
matter). For the Christian world, the myth of Christ's resurrection is
an even better example.
So the question I was trying to get at could be better rephrased as:
Did Tolkien succeed in creating a real, living, myth for England / for
his readers? Does the mythos of the Silmarillion tales function in the
deeper anthropological sense as a myth?
> I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above sense
> because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride, sacrifice,
> love. And both, the LotR IMHO even more than the SIL, do that in
> a style I would characterize as "English". So in this sense, both
> are a "Mythology for England".
> Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.
I'd say Tolkien both succeeded and failed. Succeeded, because I think
LotR *is* beginning to function as a true myth, for far more than just
England. Failed, because the Silmarillion tales do not, and also because
what success LotR has had as a myth applies across so much more than
just English culture.
>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just
>> as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they
>> were.)
>
> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he tries
> to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative world
> that would have been really possible instead of "just a story".
Well, yes. But what would his motivation have been in doing that? It
seems to me that in making ME more like a really possible world, the
round-earth version would have made the Silmarillion tales a more likely
candidate for a living myth.
Shanahan
> Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
<snip>
>> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
>
> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
> it.
My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me: what
about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels contain a
fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence
of fairy-stories" containing the greatest eucatastrophe of all, and yet
it's certainly one of the most powerful cultural myths for Christians.
<snip>
> Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
> fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
> mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective scope
> in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't think that a
> myth can work at the highly personalized level of the narrative voice
> and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.
I just might make people angry at me for saying this. Nevertheless...
I agree with everything you've said about myths in this thread. However,
I don't think that the narrative voice, or POVs, in LotR is as
personalized as
your statement above might imply. And I think that LotR does have some
claim to success as a myth, precisely because its voice is actually
quite impersonal.
In part this goes back to the difference between LotR and the modern
novel. I'm sure we've all heard in criticisms of Tolkien that his
characters are flat and lifeless. Well, in a way, I'm standing up to say
that this is true. <ducks flying projectiles>
That is in comparison to the way characters are revealed in a modern
novel. Whether 1st person or 3rd, there is a confessional, psychological
mode of insight into character thought and motivation. We are used to
being deep inside the characters' heads (or at least the protagonist's
head) in almost all 20th-century novels. That doesn't happen in LotR.
Yes, we do get an occasional voice from inside a character, most often
Frodo, always a hobbit; but even then it's not a terribly revealing
glimpse inside the character. It's more often a POV, observational
moment. Even in instances of deep emotion, Sam's "But I love him,
whether or no", Frodo's "and there is no veil between me and the wheel
of Fire", we aren't inside the character in the way readers of the
modern novel have come to expect. Nor does the narrator break into the
characters' heads for us, to explicate their thoughts and motivations.
That's what critics are trying to express when they call the characters
in LotR one-dimensional. What is really happening, of course, is that
Tolkien intentionally wrote this way. He was not trying to write a
modern novel; he was writing a great romance, a fairy story. And it's
this distance from the characters, from self-confession and
psychological underpinnings, that I think allows enough room for us to
say that LotR can function as a myth for our times.
(P.S. - Northrup Frye. Urrgh. Tom Shippey and AotC, wonderful!)
Shanahan
> In message
> <news:2006090708214...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
> Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Shippey also tries to address the question of what kind of a book
> /The Lord of the Rings/ is, citing a division of 'literary modes':
>
> The most comprehensive description we have of literary
> modes is that of Northrop Frye, in his book /An Anatomy of
> Criticism/, which came out only just after /The Lord of the
> Rings/, in 1957. Frye never mentions Tolkien's work in the
<snip>
An aside: Not to diss Shippey, whom I adore, but Northrup Frye is
emphatically not a reliable source for a definition of myth. He was a
literary man, and myths are much more than literature. Just as they can
be about much more than just divine beings. Even if you're talking
strictly literature, Frye is terribly outdated. <g>
- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
Suburbanites on a plane.
Igenlode W
> I will be a daring newbie. Not only respond, but take a few risks...
>
> It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
> could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
> it ever so scattered) begins.
>
[snip]
Interestingly, you have just reminded me of my long-since-forgotten
first reaction to finishing "The Silmarillion"; that it made the ending
of "The Lord of the Rings" into a happy one instead of a sad one :-)
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.150m.com/Tower/
But we must not be hasty; for it is easier to shout 'stop!' than to do it.
Dirk Thierbach
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>> Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
>>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
>> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
>> it.
> My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me: what
> about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels contain a
> fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence
> of fairy-stories" containing the greatest eucatastrophe of all,
Yes. So it again boils down to the question: How did Tolkien use the
word 'myth'? Shippey quotes Tolkien saying that "history resembles
'myth'", and states that Wilhelm Grimm refused to segregate "myth"
from "Heroic Legend". And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I
really think that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale
myth" direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
cultural identity.
>> I don't think that a myth can work at the highly personalized level
>> of the narrative voice and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The
>> Lord of the Rings/.
> I just might make people angry at me for saying this. Nevertheless...
> I agree with everything you've said about myths in this thread.
> However, I don't think that the narrative voice, or POVs, in LotR is
> as personalized as your statement above might imply.
Yes. It's told as "seen by the Hobbits", as the title page says, but
that doesn't mean "highly personalized".
> In part this goes back to the difference between LotR and the modern
> novel. I'm sure we've all heard in criticisms of Tolkien that his
> characters are flat and lifeless. Well, in a way, I'm standing up to say
> that this is true. <ducks flying projectiles>
And with respect to this subject, I find it interesting to compare
the way characters are handled in the "modern novel" and in, well,
"unmodern tales". In a fairy-tale, and in the saga, many characters
are fixed and don't develop: There's the "evil stepmother", the "wise
king", and so on. And while in the LotR some characters do have
different aspects (Aragorn is both the low ranger and the noble
king), they don't change, either. However, some characters do change:
The hobbits, with maybe Frodo changing the most and Sam the least.
And that's maybe not so surprising, as they are the link between
the "modern world" (and the modern novel) and the "old world" (and the
heroic legends).
> That is in comparison to the way characters are revealed in a modern
> novel. Whether 1st person or 3rd, there is a confessional, psychological
> mode of insight into character thought and motivation. We are used to
> being deep inside the characters' heads (or at least the protagonist's
> head) in almost all 20th-century novels. That doesn't happen in LotR.
OTOH, I really don't see why everyone has to bow to fashion and write
books the way 20th-century novels are written. :-)
> That's what critics are trying to express when they call the characters
> in LotR one-dimensional. What is really happening, of course, is that
> Tolkien intentionally wrote this way.
Exactly.
> He was not trying to write a modern novel; he was writing a great
> romance, a fairy story. And it's this distance from the characters,
> from self-confession and psychological underpinnings, that I think
> allows enough room for us to say that LotR can function as a myth
> for our times.
Hm. Sorry, I don't see a relationship here -- I think that "freedom"
from the way characters are handled in modern novels is neither
necessary nor sufficient to make it function as a myth.
- Dirk
Dirk Thierbach
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
>>> Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults,
>>> define the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and
>>> a set of values to that culture, structure and create the universe
>>> for them. They are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the
>>> cultural mind.
>> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths carry
>> some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't necessarily
>> define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries. Though they
>> can of course help structure the world.
> Perhaps we're using different definitions of 'myth'. You seem to be
> leaning towards the common usage of the term, and I towards the academic
> usage.
I have to admit that I don't know much about the academic usage.
So, just for the sake of distinction, let's call the first "fairy-tale
myth" and the second "contemporary myth" (of course, if anyone can
come up with better terms, we should switch to those. Maybe "common
myth" and "academic myth"? SCNR :-).
> For example, English-speakers commonly use the word 'myth' to
> describe old stories of the gods, whether Greco-Roman, Norse, Celtic,
> tribal, etc. This usage of the word implies that these are ancient tales
> which don't carry much modern relevance; although they may express some
> truths about universal human nature, they don't really have much to say
> about the modern world.
I am not so sure they don't have to say anything about the modern world.
They don't have to say much about modern *culture*, but human nature
is still much the same as it was 2000 years ago. Many children love
fairy-tales and myths. If it has no relevance to them, then why do
they still do?
Of course one can just define "(contemporary) myth" the way you did,
by cultural relevance, and then by definition the old "fairy-tale
myths" are not interesting, but that's a somewhat circular argument,
and it begs the question why this definition is a good one.
> To take CS Lewis' phrase, they are "lies breathed through silver".
Nice :-) Didn't know this one. But I'd say this applies to both kinds
of myths.
> They do not function as myths for our modern society. (With the
> probable exception of the Oedipus/Electra stories, which do function
> as living myths, in their retelling by Dr. Sigmund.)
But Oedipus/Electra is again mainly about human nature, and not about
defining culture. So maybe the human nature aspect *is* the more
important one, and the rest is just "dressing", to make application
easier?
> The anthropological definition of myth posits that a true myth, a living
> myth if you will, *does* carry strong current meaning for the society
> that tells the myth.
Why does it have to be for the *society*?
> Otherwise, it's not a myth; it's just an old story.
> For example, the myth of the lone, heroic cowboy carries such weight for
> modern American society: it defines our cultural identity in many, many
> ways, in all its iterations (not always for the best, but that's another
> matter).
Do you have other examples for "contemporary myths"? I can think of
quite a lot of "modern myths" that would express "truths" about human
nature in a contemporary setting (Dilbert, for example :-), but I have
really trouble imagining any that really define cultural identity.
> For the Christian world, the myth of Christ's resurrection is
> an even better example.
Does that really define modern Christian *culture* in any way? I am
not so sure. (And I don't want to go into the problem that "Christian"
can mean quite a lot of different things).
> So the question I was trying to get at could be better rephrased as:
> Did Tolkien succeed in creating a real, living, myth for England / for
> his readers? Does the mythos of the Silmarillion tales function in the
> deeper anthropological sense as a myth?
But maybe that's the wrong question. I think the question one has to
ask first is "what kind of 'myth' was Tolkien referring to when he
said he wanted to create a mythology for England"? Tolkien studied
Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Kalevala, the Edda. None of those are
contemporary myths -- for example, the modern German cultural identity
isn't defined by them in any particular way, and OTOH lot's of children
outside Germany still read and enjoy them. Nevertheless, they are
fairy-tale myths with a disctinctive German flavour. And I'd say that
Tolkien missed having a similar "heritage" for England (lots of it
was destroyed during the "cultural invasions", and he was *very*
interested in the few surviving parts), so he set out to create
a substitute. Not as a living contemporary myth, but, especially in
the SIL, as a replacement of those "old stories" that were lost.
> I'd say Tolkien both succeeded and failed. Succeeded, because I think
> LotR *is* beginning to function as a true myth, for far more than just
> England.
In the "contemporary myth" sense? Does it really define any cultural
identity, anywhere? I don't think so, at least, I haven't notice
any evidence for it.
>>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just
>>> as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they
>>> were.)
>> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he tries
>> to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative world
>> that would have been really possible instead of "just a story".
> Well, yes. But what would his motivation have been in doing that?
I think it's the same motivation that is shared by all science fiction
and fantasy writers: To make the "suspension of disbelief" work, to
achieve internal consistency. A flat world changing into a round one is
not very believable today. As Tolkien says in letter 154: "So deep was the
impression made by 'astronomy' on me that I do not think I could deal
with or imaginatively conceive a flat world".
- Dirk
Dirk Thierbach
> Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>> She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great, too far away to
>>> be real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any lass
>>> I've ever seen in springtime with daisies in her hair".
>> Yes. I think that's one of the descriptions that has shaped my
>> image of Galadriel most: Like a young girl and awe-inspiring at
>> the same time.
>>
>> So I'd say in the LotR she's very much real.
> I think that you experience her as closer in LotR than I do. To me
> she is portrayed as of a higher kind, though capable of the same
> faults as humans.
I think the point is not so much that she is capable of the same
faults -- the "like a young girl" means that she is "approachable"
for humans (though with a greater "depth" than humans normally have).
> The implication, to me, is that she spans further than normal people
> can do, and that this is putting her, again, outside the scope of my
> ability to identify.
But maybe not outside your imagination? At least not outside of mine.
I can picture her very clearly in those respects (and my picture
is very different from those in the movies, BTW).
> The changes Tolkien was considering to her role in the Flight of the
> Noldor (and the Beleriandric wars) would have removed her even
> further;
Again, I think that's not the point. The tendency of Tolkien to make
persons "pure" and "wholly good" just makes things more uninteresting.
> her story (if these changes were introduced) would have become the
> story of a saint -- too noble and good for the reader to identify
> easily with her,
Again, I'd say to noble and good to *interesting*. Identification
is more closely related to how the story is told, not to the character
of the person the reader has to identify with.
>> I am not sure if it would have been a good idea to give her the
>> narrative POV. It works great in the movies (they should have used
>> this idea more often), but I cannot see it working for the whole
>> SIL.
> And there is the problem of Galadriel's more elevated role evolving
> for the Silm.
The main problem I see is how to rewrite the SIL as "seen by
Galadriel" in the first place. Galadriel can take the role of a
narrator, telling all these old stories, and adding personal details
when appropriate (like Elrond at the Council, when he tells of
Gil-Galad). But in LotR, the hobbits take part as "travellers", who
come from the familiar rural-English shire into the less familiar
world of the "Great Legends", play more or less small roles in the
action (though they may have important consequences), but nevertheless
see it with there own eyes (or hear it from their close friends
later). And that's an ideal device to carry the reader along on the
journey, and something that would be next to impossible to copy for
the SIL (which is more like missing history, going on for thousands of
years).
> It is, of course, not a matter of hard and fast divisions, but a
> gradual transition, but 'myths' belong, I would say, to the end with
> the least personalized narrator[#] where there isn't really a
> narrator the reader can identify with
I think it would be not difficult to re-tell next to any myth with a
personalized narrator. Maybe it's easier to look at this in the
context of a concrete example?
> I'm currently reading Tom Shippey's /Author of the Century/, and
> there are many, very many, places that I find extremely interesting,
> and enlightening (not to mention the places where I lean back to note
> that he is just exactly right <G>).
I've read AotC only once, but I think I stell prefer /The Road to
Middle Earth/. And yes, lots of interesting stuff, but sometimes I
think Shippey goes too far, and generalizes too much.
> In Frye's view, there are five very general
> literary modes, defined only by the nature of their
> characters. At the top is /myth/: if the characters in a
> work are 'superior in kind both to other men and to the
> environment of other men', [...]
I think this is one of the worst attempts to define myth, romance, etc.
I don't mind different definitions, but this "superiority"-criterion
just doesn't reflect the available material well.
> I think the definition comes very close -- the basic function of
> 'myth' in a culture is precisely this definition of who 'we' are
> (those to whom the myth belong) -- it doesn't matter very much
> whether or no they believe the myth to be actual truth.
Can you give an example of a 'myth' that defines 'who' we are, and
describe in what way it defines that?
> I agree also with the idea that myths carry some 'truth' (I think I'd
> prefer to call it merely 'explanation' <G>), but that is a highly
> contextualized truth: one that is valid for that particular people.
Yes, certainly. Though some of the 'Truths' can apply for a quite wide
range of people.
> Therefore the truth itself is part of the boundary-definition aspect:
> it is defining 'us' as those who share this belief, and 'them' as
> those who don't.
Hm. No, I don't think so. I'd say if there is any common element that
divides 'us' and 'them', it's more the 'heritage' aspect (if he/she is
one of us, he/she very probably knows the story), and additionally, it
is the secondary ingredients that make the story feel 'familiar'.
And it's not so much a question of 'belief' (and I am even not sure
*what* one should believe *in*. Maybe you can give an example?)
I guess the 'core' part (or parts) would probably even recognized by
'them', and would only become unregocnizable in totally different
cultures. An Englishman like Tolkien can study and enjoy scandinavian
myths. So can, say, Japanese people, and vice versa.
- Dirk
Donald Grove
wrote:
>Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>> Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>
><snip>
>>> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
>>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
>>
>> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
>> it.
>
>My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me: what
>about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels contain a
>fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence
>of fairy-stories" containing the greatest eucatastrophe of all, and yet
>it's certainly one of the most powerful cultural myths for Christians.
>
><snip>
>> Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
>> fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
>> mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective scope
>> in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't think that a
>> myth can work at the highly personalized level of the narrative voice
>> and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.
>
There isn't a solid working definition of myth, but I agree that a
myth usually survives because it is adaptable to varying
interpretations within a culture over time.
Personally, I subscribe to the view taken by Robert Graves, that many
myths are representations of religious rituals or historical events,
which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure. Whether or
not that is the case, I have always been interested in repeated themes
and devices in mythology, such as fruit (Persephone eating the
pomegranate, Freia cultivating apples of eternal youth), the various
events that lead up to the death of a god or god-like hero (Baldur or
Herakles), or the preservation of a childhood object that later proves
a hidden identity (Moses' swaddling cloth, Orestes sandal etc).
I have a tentative list of such things from Tolkien. Although there is
no arguing that any of these things conform to the Robert Graves
definition, there is a wonderful pattern of symbolic repetition which
is reminiscent of myth, whether intentional or not. In my list, I am
not arguing for how Tolkien's themes relate to any other mythology,
but only the repetition within his own.
1. The theme of hidden cities or kingdoms. Gondolin,
Nargothrond, Doriath, finally after the first age, Aman itself. And
the shifting magical boundaries resonate even in the Barrow Downs and
the Paths of the Dead, where hidden or invisible realms open
themselves in particular ways at particular times. Even secret
entrances, available only to those with the correct spells (or keys).
2. The theme of the severed hand wielded at a moment of
challenge. The hand of Barahir is held forward as a token of the
promise made to the elves, the hand of Beren is pulled from the belly
of Carcharoth and when held up, reveals that the Silmaril was
captured. This has a sort of diminution in LOTR, where the finger
wearing the Ring is severed twice, and at the end, ironically held
aloft by Gollum.
3. The theme of stumbling or falling, only to awaken later after
a great change has occurred. Bilbo stumbles, faints and finds the
Ring. Bilbo falls at Battle of the Five Armies, awaking to find the
Orcs were vanquished. Frodo falls at Bruinen and wakes at Rivendell.
Frodo falls at Mount Doom and awakes at Cormallen. Merry falls at
Pellenor, and awakes to find himself with Pippin. Pippin has his fall
at the Last Battle, reminiscent of Bilbo. Gandalf falls at the peak
of Zirak-Zigil, and is reborn. The list goes on. And stumbling both
discovers the Ring for Bilbo and loses it for Gollum.
4. The theme of magical gifts. This is mostly LOTR. Galadriel's
vial with the light of Earendil, Sting, even the Ring itself, when
Bilbo finally leaves it for Frodo.
These are but a few of the repetitions through different stories that
give a quasi-mythological feeling to Tolkien's tales. In the case of
the R Graves style interpretation, it would argue for historical or
ritual similarities between stories. In Tolkien's case, it is pure
invention. But invention with a powerful mind behind it!
Donald
>(P.S. - Northrup Frye. Urrgh. Tom Shippey and AotC, wonderful!)
>
>- Ciaran S.
Hear hear!
Troels Forchhammer
>
[Tom Shippey citing Frye's 'literary modes']
> An aside: Not to diss Shippey, whom I adore, but Northrup Frye is
> emphatically not a reliable source for a definition of myth.
The main reason for me to include it was that I had come across it
the same day while reading /Author of the Century/, and I noted that
it pertained to the current discussions ;-)
> He was a literary man, and myths are much more than literature.
Oh, definitely!
'Myth', in the traditional sense (i.e. stories belonging to the
handed-down mythologies), seems to me to be rather 'illerate' in
origin ;-) (by which I mean that it is based in an oral, pre-
literate, tradition).
> Just as they can be about much more than just divine beings.
His definition of 'divine' as characters being 'superior in kind'
seems to me broader than the usual definition of divine (or even
semi-divine).
There's a Scand word, 'sagn' (sorry), that seems to be appropriate
here. My dictionary translates it as both 'myth' and 'legend', and
something in-between seems to me to be implied. The heroes of 'sagn'
seem to fill a place where it is difficult to say if they are really
'superior in kind' or (just) 'superior in degree' to their
environment.
Is Beowulf a myth or a legend?
I suspect that if one is sufficiently broad-minded about'superior in
kind', then his definition of 'myth' would work quite nicely ;-)
> Even if you're talking strictly literature, Frye is terribly
> outdated. <g>
I wouldn't be surprised ;-)
Shippey, of course, isn't speaking from a strictly literature
viewpoint, but from a generally philological viewpoint (he also
doesn't use the 'myth' definition very much, but seems to focus on
the modes from romance to irony).
Out of curiosity, I've been looking about a bit for definitons of
'Myth', and if I had been hoping for some kind of nice agreement on a
clear-cut definition, I'd've been very disappointed ;-)
I don't know if it helps us in any way, but here's a sampling of it:
Cambridge International Dictionary of English
an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining
in a literary way the early history of a group of people
or about natural events and facts:
<http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=52767&dict=CALD>
AskOxford (Oxford Concise Dictionary)
a traditional story concerning the early history of a
people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon,
typically involving the supernatural.
<http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/myth?view=uk>
Merriam-Webster
1 a : a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical
events that serves to unfold part of the world view
of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural
phenomenon
b : PARABLE, ALLEGORY
2 a : a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around
something or someone; especially : one embodying the
ideals and institutions of a society or segment of
society <seduced by the American myth of individualism
-- Orde Coombs>
b : an unfounded or false notion
3 : a person or thing having only an imaginary or
unverifiable existence
4 : the whole body of myths
<http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=myth>
ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science
From the classical Greek word mythos, meaning "story." A
socially powerful narrative rooted in the traditions of a
specific culture, capable of being understood and
appreciated in its own right but at the same time part of
a system of stories (mythology) transmitted orally from
one generation to the next to illustrate man's
relationship to the cosmos. In traditional societies,
myths often serve as the basis for social customs and
observances, although their origins may be long-forgotten.
Many of the archetypes of classical Greek mythology
recur in the literature of Western culture, and some have
been appropriated by disciplines outside the arts and
humanities (example: Oedipus complex in psychology). Some
scholars have argued that mythic thinking is integral to
human consciousness and that myths are simply a
manifestation of the way culture is created by the human
mind. Dictionaries of mythology are available in the
reference section of public and academic libraries.
Bulfinch's Mythology is available online in full-text. See
also Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts and the
Yahoo! list of Web sites on mythology and folklore.
Compare with folktale and legend.
<http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_m.cfm#myth>
ArtLex Lexicon
myth - A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with
supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a
fundamental type in the world view of a people, as by
explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the
psychology, customs, or ideals of society. (pr. mith) See
attribute, Greek art, mythology, narrative art, and Roman
art.
<http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Mol.html>
Irivng Hexham's Concise Dictionary of Religion
MYTH: a myth is a type of narrative which seeks to express
in imaginative FORM a BELIEF about man, the world, and/or
GOD or GODS which cannot adequately be expressed in simply
PROPOSITIONS. Since this word is used in both contemporary
scientific and theological literature, any DEFINITION of
it appears to be arbitrary. In common language, the word
is used to denote stories that have no basis in FACT. This
meaning is too loose for anthropologists and philosophers.
Myths can be contrasted with LEGENDS, fairy tales, etc.
This implies no JUDGMENT on the TRUTH of the story;
indeed, it is possible to have a true story serve as a
myth. Critics of myth argue that it tends to open the door
to IRRATIONALISM. Myth has been held to be a truer or
deeper version of REALITY than SECULAR HISTORY, realistic
description, or scientific explanation. This view ranges
from irrationalism and post-CHRISTIAN supernaturalism to
more sophisticated accounts in which myths are held to be
fundamental expressions of certain properties of the human
mind. Myth is both a very significant and difficult word.
One very useful DEFINITION is a story with culturally
formative power that functions to direct the life and
thought of INDIVIDUALS and GROUPS or SOCIETIES.
<http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/books/concise/WORDS-M.html>
Anthropology dictionary
myth: stories that are told about the deeds that
supernatural beings played in the creation of human beings
and the universe itself.
<http://www.webref.org/anthropology/m/myth.htm>
mythology: a body of stories which have become traditional
for a given human society; very frequently, mythologies
are associated with religious beliefs. Other types of
stories which can be a component of mythology include
legends and folktales.
<http://www.webref.org/anthropology/m/mythology.htm>
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
Lo! we have gathered, and we have spent, and now the time
of payment draws near.
- Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Donald Grove
<Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
>Donald Grove <donal...@verizon.net> wrote in message <gsoqf2dm1poc9jdut...@4ax.com>
>
>> I will be a daring newbie. Not only respond, but take a few risks...
>>
>> It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
>> could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
>> it ever so scattered) begins.
>>
>[snip]
>
>Interestingly, you have just reminded me of my long-since-forgotten
>first reaction to finishing "The Silmarillion"; that it made the ending
>of "The Lord of the Rings" into a happy one instead of a sad one :-)
Interesting take! I would say that although the conclusion of LOTR is
mixed.
This thread has given me so much food for thought, I am not sure what
I think of anything right at the moment. Well done, everyone!
Troels Forchhammer
<news:2006090708214...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
>
> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>
<snip>
>> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So
>> stories. Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and
>> adults, define the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a
>> history and a set of values to that culture, structure and create
>> the universe for them. They are a reflection of ritual and sacred
>> space in the cultural mind.
>
> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths
> carry some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't
> necessarily define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries.
> Though they can of course help structure the world.
Tolkien describes in many places the complex of stories that constitute
the Silmarillion (in the widest possible sense) as a 'mythology'. In a
letter in 1949 to Naomi Mitchison (letter #133), he describes the book
he hopes to publish (besides /LotR/), as "pure myth and legend of times
already remote in Bilbo's days."
In the long letter to Milton Waldman, we have the famous passage where
he tells about his ambition:
Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long
since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less
connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic,
to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on
the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing
splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could
dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.
[Letter #131, To Milton Waldman, late 1951?]
<http://www.americanidea.org/handouts/06240106.htm>
But, perhaps more importantly, he describes the transition from the
Ainulindalė, 'a cosmogonical myth', from where:
It moves then swiftly to the History of the Elves, or
the Silmarillion proper; to the world as we perceive it,
but of course transfigured in a still half-mythical mode:
that is it deals with rational incarnate creatures of more
or less comparable stature with our own.
[ibid.]
Later, '[a]s the stories become less mythical, and more like stories
and romances. Men are interwoven' and finally, 'as the earliest Tales
are seen through Elvish eyes, as it were, this last great Tale, coming
down from myth and legend to the earth, is seen mainly though the eyes
of Hobbits'.
My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth to
romance as gradual, with the majority of the Silmarillion (certainly
everything after the flight of the Noldor) concerned with precisely the
span between the purely mythical, and the purely down to earth.
So, about this famous 'Mythology for England':
Having set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully
recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to
the English an epic tradition and present them with a
mythology of their own: : it is a wonderful thing to be
told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have
still the undarkened heart and mind.
[Letter #180, To 'Mr Thompson', January 1956]
That Tolkien imagined the stories of the Silmarillion to belong to a
mythology didn't mean that he considered all of them to be 'myths' or
even equally 'mythical'.
>> Does /The Silmarillion/, even in its edited and elided form, do
>> any of that for Western, or even English, culture? Would it, if
>> JRRT had finished it? Does LotR?
>
> I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above
> sense because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride,
> sacrifice, love.
I don't think that that is enough for 'myth' -- many stories, and
nearly all good stories, deal with truths about human nature in this
way, but I wouldn't consider them as myths for that -- not even when
the answers they provide (or investigate) can have an ethnically very
narrow applicability.
> And both, the LotR IMHO even more than the SIL, do that in a style
> I would characterize as "English". So in this sense, both are a
> "Mythology for England".
The odd thing is that while Tolkien was definitely thinking of the
Silmarillion (the whole body of writings rather than just the parts in
the published /The Silmarillion/), his response in letter #180 above is
to someone who had read /The Lord of the Rings/ and seen in it
something of the sort that Tolkien had wanted to create.
> Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.
I think Tolkien's view on 'myth' would be primarily philological.
Venturing onto very thin ice, my impression is that Tolkien had strong
opinions about the relationship between language, stories and people.
He believed, I think, that the three parts all influence each other,
shaping and defining each other, so that a language without myths,
legends and stories to and in it was dead, and a people was defined by
its language and the tales in that language.
When Tolkien spoke about 'restoring to the English [...] a mythology of
their own', I think that there is a good chance that he was thinking at
least as much of mythology in the philological sense as in any literary
or anthropological sense.
>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not
>> just as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales
>> as they were.)
>
> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he
> tries to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative
> world that would have been really possible instead of "just a
> story".
I don't know what I think ;-)
If intended to be read as myths, I think it would have to be in the
sense of the original audience to the myth, but that is clearly not the
role the Greek, Roman, Finnish or Norse mythologies have today in the
societies that have evolved from the peoples who created (and believed
in) the myths.
My big problem is that the move would, I believe, at the same time as
it was intended (based on the phrase 'astronomically absurd') to make
the mythology more credible to a modern mind, have made the wholy
mythology /less/ credible, as a mythology, to the modern mind.
The round-world version contained elements that would be credible to
both the modern reader and to his English longfathers; the problem
would be that much of the stuff that was credible to one, would seem
anachronistically incredible to the other and vice versa. The older
flat-world version always had to me the the quality of something my
long-fathers might very well have believed, but the projected round-
world version lose, IMO, some of that 'authenticity'.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot ++
- /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)
Dirk Thierbach
> Dirk Thierbach <dthie...@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
[quotes snipped]
> My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth to
> romance as gradual,
Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here -- I
have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.
> That Tolkien imagined the stories of the Silmarillion to belong to a
> mythology didn't mean that he considered all of them to be 'myths' or
> even equally 'mythical'.
Given that the term isn't particularly well-defined in the first
place, I don't think we have to niggle about such details :-)
>> I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above
>> sense because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride,
>> sacrifice, love.
> I don't think that that is enough for 'myth' -- many stories, and
> nearly all good stories, deal with truths about human nature in this
> way, but I wouldn't consider them as myths for that -- not even when
> the answers they provide (or investigate) can have an ethnically very
> narrow applicability.
Yes, certainly. It's not a sufficient condition.
> The odd thing is that while Tolkien was definitely thinking of the
> Silmarillion (the whole body of writings rather than just the parts in
> the published /The Silmarillion/), his response in letter #180 above is
> to someone who had read /The Lord of the Rings/ and seen in it
> something of the sort that Tolkien had wanted to create.
It's not so odd when one remembers that lots of stuff from the SIL got
"drawn in" in the process of writing LotR, so it's still present and
makes up a large part of the "mythological/historical" background. As
I said, presentation doesn't really matter so much (whether it is told
from a personal or impersonal POV, for example), the material itself
matters.
>> Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.
> I think Tolkien's view on 'myth' would be primarily philological.
It would play an important role, certainly.
> Venturing onto very thin ice, my impression is that Tolkien had strong
> opinions about the relationship between language, stories and people.
> He believed, I think, that the three parts all influence each other,
> shaping and defining each other, so that a language without myths,
> legends and stories to and in it was dead, and a people was defined by
> its language and the tales in that language.
Yes, I'd agree.
>>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not
>>> just as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales
>>> as they were.)
> If intended to be read as myths,
But they are not "intended" to be read as myths. Primarily, they are
stories, and as such, there's nothing wrong to tinker with the
"presentation" and tell it in a way that is less offending to people
with a stronger "scientific" background.
It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science fiction
setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it plausible. /The
Snow Queen/ by Joan D. Vinge may be an interesting example in this
respect.
> My big problem is that the move would, I believe, at the same time as
> it was intended (based on the phrase 'astronomically absurd') to make
> the mythology more credible to a modern mind, have made the wholy
> mythology /less/ credible, as a mythology, to the modern mind.
Why? It doesn't really matter if he starts out with a flat world
that is then transformed to a round world, or if the world is round
from the start. The real problem is that in the latter setting,
some of the devices of the original version (the Lamps, the Trees)
now stand out as somewhat strange. So one would have to change those,
too, and so on, and when those changes pile up, there's maybe not
much left of the original idea.
> The older flat-world version always had to me the the quality of
> something my long-fathers might very well have believed, but the
> projected round-world version lose, IMO, some of that 'authenticity'.
I didn't read up details on Tolkiens projected idea (where exactly
is it in HoME?), but in general, I think one could make an round
world creation-myth with an 'authentic' feeling without any problem.
- Dirk
Troels Forchhammer
<news:2006090707564...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
>>
>
> Great explanation, I'd just like to nitpick on a few details:
And I'll pick a little further ;-)
>> Sauron died thrice,
There are hints, I believe, that Tolkien was considering that he
should have died four times, the first being in the fight against
Huan and Lúthien.
>> in that the body that he had formed and had become bound to
>> beyond its being mere raiment and tool was violently destroyed.
>> Twice he reincarnated, becoming diminished as he spent
>> some of his innate power on building a new body for himself
>> without help. The first time he managed it swiftly, because he
>> had his Ring,
>
> Or because he still had enough "power" (or whatever one could call
> it) left to embody himself quickly.
It is, in any case, difficult to attribute the increased time merely
to the loss of the /enhancement/ of his power, that he had when
holding the Ruling Ring, and it also goes against what Tolkien said
about the matter:
After the battle with Gilgalad and Elendil, Sauron took a
long while to re-build, longer than he had done after the
Downfall of Númenor (I suppose because each building-up
used up some of the inherent energy of the spirit, which
might be called the 'will' or the effective link between
the indestructible mind and being and the realization of
its imagination). The impossibility of re-building after
the destruction of the Ring, is sufficiently clear
'mythologically' in the present book.
[Letter #200, To Major R. Bowen, June 1957]
The use of 'I suppose' suggests, to me, that Tolkien hadn't thought
it through very well. It is entirely possible that he would, had he
had to give a more official explanation, have come up with some kind
of combined explanation (i.e. both the absence of the Ruling Ring and
the loss of inherent energy), but such as it is, the suggestion is
that the loss of energy due to two deaths was the primary reason for
the increase of the time he took to rebuild a body.
<snip>
>> The third time his body perished the Ring, which had aided his
>> reincarnation by having part of him in it, was unmade, and he
>> became too weak to ever reincarnate again.
>
> And the way I understand it, that's because he had externalized
> some of his "power" by making the Ring, so he could never loose
> that part as long the Ring existed.
And as long as the Ring was not 'mastered' by someone else. While he
wore the One Ring, he was, however, enhanced, and I'm willing to
consider that 'wearing' the One Ring didn't necessarily require him
to have a physical finger through it -- after all he was able to
carry it from Númenor to Mordor at the drowning.
> (Similar to the fairy story "The Cold Heart", where the
> protagonist puts his heart into a glass jar and cannot die as
> long as this jar stays hidden).
Yes -- the externalisation of power is a quite common motif in both
fairy-stories and in myth (having the antagonist to put his heart or
soul in an external container, requiring the protagonist to find it
and destroy it is the version that I'm most familiar with).
> So without the Ring being destroyed, he would always be able to
> embody himself again (no matter if the Ring was in his possession
> or not), though maybe every time more slowly.
Perhaps not 'always', but he could definitely have got through more
re-embodiments if he had not lost the power he instilled in the One
Ring (I'm not convinced that it's basically meaningful to ask how
large a part of his power he had put in the Ring, nor how many re-
embodiments it would take for him to lose the ability to re-embody).
>> When Saruman was killed by Gríma, the body that he had become
>> bound to was destroyed and could no longer house his spirit.
>> He did not have sufficient power to form a new body,
>
> Maybe the reason is that Istari were already restricted in their
> "power" when they were sent to middle-earth: They were
> "incarnated" and bound firmly to their bodies.
I like this idea.
There is solid evidence telling us that the incarnation of the Istari
was different from the normal self-arrayal of the Ainur. I have long
felt that this difference was not only in degree, but in kind, and
this idea seems to fit quite well with my thoughts.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Belba Grubb
> So, Barb, how do you react to all this?
I have been thinking over the first few posts in response, and thinking
some more, and then thinking some about it...just checked the thread
today and found so many more insightful responses. I am still reading
them, so please forgive any overlap with later posts.
I would only add as a supplement (and Troels will not be at all
surprised by this), that there are also some insights to be gleaned
from "On Fairy-stories," which I don't have in front of me right now,
so a detailed analysis will have to wait. It took some time to
appreciate, but as I became more familiar with the biographical
setting, realizing that JRRT delivered the lecture soon after he had
begun /The Lord of the Rings/, its importance became more clear. This
was further established by JRRT's own comments on what had by then
become an essay and then "scurvily allowed to go out of print." (Letter
163)
Just from what I can recall of the essay, JRRT's enthusiasm stands out.
He is the master, and speaks familiarly both of Elves, as if he were
holding discourse with them every day (as he is doing just about every
night at this point, per the biography), and of linguistics. Philology
and its contribution to fairy-stories is prominent in /On
Fairy-stories/. Among the many excellent insights in this thread, the
importance of philology is an especially good point.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that JRRT was at the height of his powers
then, in his late 40s. The "life-blood" comment was made almost 10
years later, as JRRT was in his mid-50s, with the Big Six-Oh looming,
and he was starting to realize (as all of us must) that from now on
life was going to be a rather downhill course. Ambrose Bierce said it
best in his definition of "yesterday" for /The Devil's Dictionary/.
But yesterday I should have thought me blest
To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
Of middle life and look adown the bleak
And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
Where solemn shadows all the land invest
And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
To stay the shadow on the dial's face
At manhood's noonmark...
Perhaps JRRT was simply recognizing that he was no longer capable of
the effort and life experiences that had resulted in /The Lord of the
Rings/. Also, the world had changed and everything was new and
strange: his work was rooted in pre-WWII times (but see below for note
on his letters to Christopher), and he could have no idea how this new,
materialistic and mechanistic world would react to his fairy-tale for
adults. He was vulnerable, exposed, and getting old.
Then there is CS Lewis. He is mentioned indirectly in "On
Fairy-stories" (in the amended excerpt from /Metamorphosis/). By
considering Lewis as part of the "soup,' one can see great difference
between /The Silmarillion/, which Lewis knew in MS form, and /The Lord
of the Rings/, selections of which JRRT read to Lewis and the other
Inklings for comments and criticism. I am not familiar enough with the
personal stories of both men and of the Inklings history to say much
about that, but Lewis certainly helped shape /The Lord of the Rings/
and at his death JRRT would describe himself feeling as if he were a
tree that had taken an axe blow to the roots; there is certainly some
major tributary of the "life-blood" river there that distinguishes it
from /The Silmarillion/.
JRRT was a man of contradictions, and it was endearing but also
confusing. One can't rely totally on what he says at any one time;
it's as if he were in contact with reality on a constantly interactive
basis and would likely reinterpret the whole thing at another point in
time, and be quite sincere and truthful in both statements, which might
appear to a confused bystander as diametrically opposite in meaning.
One has to look at what he did, and also look at him from an angle, as
it were, as if trying to see a multidimensional entity from a 1- or
2-dimensional plane. The man was most definitely a genius, and so may
always be a puzzle to us.
In viewing what he did, I would return to his enthusiasm in "On
Fairy-stories" and his lasting friendship with Lewis and their
interaction during the creation of /The Lord of the Rings/. I would
also mention Christopher being away at war during part of that time.
In some of the letters to CJRT of that period, there is the same
"voice" that one hears in /The Lord of the Rings/. It was as though
JRRT were taking little verbal snapshots of the land back home that
both he and CJRT knew and loved so well, and sending them to his son.
It worked both ways. There is the poignant image in the book of
Denethor's frustration at spending even his sons, and how he slept in
mail at night.
Indeed there is a nexus here between /The Lord of the Rings/, written
with CJRT was at war, and /The Silmarillion/, which first began to take
shape in 1916 when JRRT was in the hospital after his own experiences
of war. But I hesitate to say too much about it just now.
There was something of life-blood about that "voice," though, and it
was directed at Christopher, who has certainly committed much of his
own in return.
It is sad, in /Letters/, how tired the old man sounded for a while, but
then came letter 323, begun in mid-1971, which echoed, though it did
not reproduce, the vitality and "you are there"-ness of the earlier
"verbal snapshots." On reading that, I felt as one does in September
(up north) or October (here in the South), when a warm day comes that
reminds one of summer.
Well, those are just some thoughts, since you asked, Ciaran. (g)
Back to reading the posts and thinking some more.
Barb
Belba Grubb
> In message <news:edg3...@enews2.newsguy.com>> >> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement
> >> etc.) associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses
> >> associated with fighting a war which is meaningless and, though
> >> they are fighting Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a
> >> people, not of a person . . .
> >
> > Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than
> > personal re the author.
>
> Precisely -- and to an even greater extent re the narrator, I think. It
> is the mediation through the personal narrator that brings the story
> down to eye level -- of course it's a difficult distinction to make
> when the narrator is also one of the characters in the story, but I
> think it comes down to the very personalised narratives in LotR (and,
> to a lesser degree, /The Hobbit/).
Could it be that JRRT, recognizing this, attempted to bring the
"greater matter" down to the popular level, through the mediation of
the eyewitness narrator of those times, Tom Bombadil? And that he
inserted into the earthy, personalized viewpoint of the hobbits in /The
Lord of the Rings/ what he considered the quintessence of his other
works about Arda?
...it seemed as if, under the spell of his words,
the wind had gone, and the clouds had dried up,
and the day had been withdrawn, and darkness
had come from East and West, and all the sky
was filled with the light of white stars...[Frodo]
did not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with
wonder. The stars shone through the window
and the silence of the heavens seemed to be
around him. He spoke at least out of his wonder
and a sudden fear of that silence:"
And of course the question that Frodo then asked has gone on to haunt
and tantalize and torment us ever since we first heard it. I'm not
saying that what JRRT did here, if he was indeed trying to insert his
"greater work" into what he could actually get published and to
interest the reader in the wonder of Arda, worked; it seems to have
drawn attention more to the character of Tom Bombadil than to the
remarkable time Tom described to the hobbits. Whether it worked or
not, this is still a remarkable piece of writing. I like the
simultaneous presence of darkness from East to West and all the sky
filled with white starlight. I think there is something about the
opposites of total evil and total good in Faerie in "On Fairy-stories"
(unless it was GK Chesterton in the Elfland part of /Orthodoxy/), but
as mentioned in another post of this date, OFT is not available to me
right now.
> The narrative viewpoint in LotR is much different from that in the Silm
> -- in the former we get much closer to the emotions and thoughts of the
> characters, and the anachronistic aspects of the hobbits telling the
> story helps us identify with the narrator (we can appreciate just how
> far out his depth Bilbo was when he found himself facing three trolls,
> or alone in the caves of the goblins).
Somebody has mentioned here what it would have meant had Galadriel been
fully developed as JRRT apparently intended. I wonder, given the
above, what if Tom Bombadil had been the narrator. It probably
wouldn't have worked -- he's too flighty and odd. Galadriel was much
more accessible a character.
Barb
Shanahan
<snip>
> There isn't a solid working definition of myth, but I agree that a
> myth usually survives because it is adaptable to varying
> interpretations within a culture over time.
Definitely. This is the structural anthropological definition, which
always posits that structures in human society endure only when they
have a current function as well as a past function.
> Personally, I subscribe to the view taken by Robert Graves, that many
> myths are representations of religious rituals or historical events,
> which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure.
Another very important part of what mythology encompasses. For example,
the way that the myth of the Last Supper and the Mass reflect each
other.
<snip>
> I have a tentative list of such things from Tolkien.
<snip nifty list>
> These are but a few of the repetitions through different stories that
> give a quasi-mythological feeling to Tolkien's tales. In the case of
> the R Graves style interpretation, it would argue for historical or
> ritual similarities between stories.
Great list! This also argues for the similarities between the varied
structures of human minds and human societies, that lie behind the
similarities between stories. We aren't all that different from each
other after all...
> In Tolkien's case, it is pure
> invention. But invention with a powerful mind behind it!
Powerful, and creative, and deeply learned, and with a great sense of
the beauty of words and the best that humankind can be. Oh yes.
- Ciaran S.
----------------------------------
Do I contradict myself
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)
- Whitman
Shanahan
> In message <news:ee00e...@enews2.newsguy.com>
> "Shanahan" <pog...@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
<snip>
> 'Myth', in the traditional sense (i.e. stories belonging to the
> handed-down mythologies), seems to me to be rather 'illerate' in
> origin ;-) (by which I mean that it is based in an oral, pre-
> literate, tradition).
That's exactly right, and it's why I have a problem with Frye's
definition: something created by many folks, changed by each generation
to reflect its own reality, belongs to an entire society in terms of
authorship, and can't be effectively analyzed by literary criticism.
Also, Frye's def. leaves out the functional aspect of myth.
> Is Beowulf a myth or a legend?
I wish we had Tolkien's answer to that question! (I'd put multiple
exclamation points on the end there, but that would be the sure sign of
an insane mind.) I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read "The Monster
and the Critics". Is there any answer there?
<snip>
> Out of curiosity, I've been looking about a bit for definitons of
> 'Myth', and if I had been hoping for some kind of nice agreement on a
> clear-cut definition, I'd've been very disappointed ;-)
> I don't know if it helps us in any way, but here's a sampling of it:
Goddess, what a mess! No wonder we can't agree on it!
> ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science
> From the classical Greek word mythos, meaning "story." A
> socially powerful narrative rooted in the traditions of a
> specific culture, capable of being understood and
> appreciated in its own right but at the same time part of
> a system of stories (mythology) transmitted orally from
> one generation to the next to illustrate man's
> relationship to the cosmos. In traditional societies,
> myths often serve as the basis for social customs and
> observances, although their origins may be long-forgotten.
> Many of the archetypes of classical Greek mythology
> recur in the literature of Western culture, and some have
> been appropriated by disciplines outside the arts and
> humanities (example: Oedipus complex in psychology). Some
> scholars have argued that mythic thinking is integral to
> human consciousness and that myths are simply a
> manifestation of the way culture is created by the human
> mind.
Add to this what Donald referenced above, that:
"many myths are representations of religious rituals or historical
events,
which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure"
and I think this definition covers most of the bases.
> One very useful DEFINITION is a story with culturally
> formative power that functions to direct the life and
> thought of INDIVIDUALS and GROUPS or SOCIETIES.
> <http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/books/concise/WORDS-M.html>
I also like this one. And it has the advantage of being concise.
- Ciaran S.
----------------------------------------
Shanahan
<snip>
> Yes. So it again boils down to the question: How did Tolkien use the
> word 'myth'? Shippey quotes Tolkien saying that "history resembles
> 'myth'", and states that Wilhelm Grimm refused to segregate "myth"
> from "Heroic Legend". And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I
> really think that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale
> myth" direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
> cultural identity.
Yes, going by OFS. But there's a discussion between he and CSLewis about
myth, CSL calling them basically lies, and Tolkien disagreeing and
comparing the historical mode with the mythological, stating that
mythology is a far superior way of conveying truth. But of course I
can't locate my reference to that conversation. Da*n.
> OTOH, I really don't see why everyone has to bow to fashion and write
> books the way 20th-century novels are written. :-)
Agreed! I find much to dislike in modern novels. Especially Hemingway
and Joyce.
> Hm. Sorry, I don't see a relationship here -- I think that "freedom"
> from the way characters are handled in modern novels is neither
> necessary nor sufficient to make it function as a myth.
I'll be thinking about this, you may very well be right. <g> What then
is necessary to make a story function as myth?
- Ciaran S.
-----------------------------------------
Shanahan
ever participated in on this ng? It's been thoughtful, deep,
wide-ranging and fruitful. It has gone far afield from Tolkien at times,
yet we always return to him as a touchstone. And no one has gotten angry
or egotistical or called anyone else names, or even been snippy! I'm a
happy camper. <deep satisfied sigh>
- Ciaran S.
Count Menelvagor
Shanahan wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>
> <snip>
> > Yes. So it again boils down to the question: How did Tolkien use the
> > word 'myth'? Shippey quotes Tolkien saying that "history resembles
> > 'myth'", and states that Wilhelm Grimm refused to segregate "myth"
> > from "Heroic Legend". And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I
> > really think that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale
> > myth" direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
> > cultural identity.
>
> Yes, going by OFS. But there's a discussion between he and CSLewis about
> myth, CSL calling them basically lies, and Tolkien disagreeing and
> comparing the historical mode with the mythological, stating that
> mythology is a far superior way of conveying truth. But of course I
> can't locate my reference to that conversation. Da*n.
there's an account of it in carpenter's biography of tolkien. (and i
thinka slightly different version somehwere else, unless i'm thinking
of the bit in OFS.)
Shanahan
> Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
>> My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth to
>> romance as gradual,
>
> Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here -- I
> have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
> aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.
If we're going to use only the sense in which Tolkien uses 'myth',
that's something other than what I intended. But perhaps a more
legitimate sense to use on this ng. I do wish we had the references to
make this more clear. I know nothing whatsoever about philology as a
discipline, and so nothing about how it might define 'myth'.
<snip>
> It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science fiction
> setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it plausible.
> /The Snow Queen/ by Joan D. Vinge may be an interesting example in
this
> respect.
A wonderful book. Both the Vinges are fabulous writers, although I
wasn't terribly impressed with Vernor's latest book. The series of
retellings of fairie stories by various authors, published by Terri
Windling, I think, are also very interesting.
- Ciaran S.
-----------------------
mooreeffoc
Troels Forchhammer
<news:20060911093302...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de> Dirk> Troels Forchhammer <Tro...@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
>>
<snip>
>> My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth
>> to romance as gradual,
>
> Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here
I don't think it really matters all that much in this case -- the point
is not what exactly he meant by it, but whether he considered it a
matter of either-or, a binary 'scale', or a gradual scale.
> I have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
> aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.
Oh?! I never got that impression anywhere. I'm sure Tolkien would have
agreed that the Biblical stories are 'myths' even though he also
firmly believed that they were real.
The impression I get is that 'myth' require an element of the
supernatural, or preferably the divine.
>> That Tolkien imagined the stories of the Silmarillion to belong
>> to a mythology didn't mean that he considered all of them to be
>> 'myths' or even equally 'mythical'.
>
> Given that the term isn't particularly well-defined in the first
> place, I don't think we have to niggle about such details :-)
I'm not sure I agree entirely. The precise words are not very important
in any case, but I'm curious about what he meant by his statements
about this 'mythology for the English' concept, and for this it is
interesting to discuss what he saw it as consisting of, and how he
distinguished between the various modes.
In this context, IIRC, the interest is particularly in the differences
between the Silmarillion stuff and the texts in /The Hobbit/ and /The
Lord of the Rings/ -- and especially in explaining the commonly
experienced difference in 'getting into' the story, which Belba
originally commented upon.
The question here would be if Tolkien's view on the role and mode of
the stories (e.g. 'myth' vs. 'romance', if that was how he saw it)
influenced the texts so that this difference in 'getting into' became
inevitable; or if the two are otherwise causally connected.
I believe that the mythical / legendary air that Tolkien wanted to
convey in the Silmarillion would not work with, or be possible with,
the very intimate narrative voice in the hobbit stories, and that it is
this intimacy between the narrator and the reader that makes the
hobbit-narrated books so much easer to 'get into'. I furthermore
believe that the anachronistic elements about the hobbits is an
importartant part of establishing that intimacy between the reader and
the narrator where the reader is able to identify with the narrator (or
the character carrying the narrative focus).
<snip>
>> I think Tolkien's view on 'myth' would be primarily philological.
>
> It would play an important role, certainly.
>
>> Venturing onto very thin ice, my impression is that Tolkien had
>> strong opinions about the relationship between language, stories
>> and people. He believed, I think, that the three parts all
>> influence each other, shaping and defining each other, so that a
>> language without myths, legends and stories to and in it was
>> dead, and a people was defined by its language and the tales in
>> that language.
>
> Yes, I'd agree.
Excellent ;-)
Now, I think one could make a case for Tolkien's intention with his
'mythology for the English' to be mainly philological (at least
initially) -- a body of tales that could stand in the stead of the
truly lost mythology and which could have led to the same fragments
that he knew (such as /Beowulf/ and /Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/
etc.) as well as given certain words to the English language, and
which, in the anthropological sense, might have 'defined' a culture
that could have been the predecessor of the known English cultural
development. It would not be the 'real thing', but an approximation
that could be reached by working one's way backwards; one possible
mythology that could have led to the observed results.
Tolkien did, according to Shippey, make writings that were very
obviously of this kind -- e.g. an elaborate riddle in Old English,
which just might have been the predecessor of a nursery-rhyme; an
activity which Shippey likens to the philological / linguistic exercise
of re-creating the word from which other, modern, words are derived
(e.g. the common Germannic word that has given us the English 'Dwarf').
Tolkien, the argument goes, was, however, not satisfied with
establishing the form of the word -- he also wanted to know what it
meant, and that is where the 'mythology' comes into this.
About re-working the mythology to the round-world version "So that
moderns could read them as myths" (Shahanan):
>> If intended to be read as myths,
>
> But they are not "intended" to be read as myths. Primarily, they
> are stories,
I'm not so sure about that. That is why I think it is interesting to
look at what Tolkien called them, and his descriptions consistently
evoke such concepts as 'myth' and 'legend' and he discuss their
relative levels of 'mythological'. It seems to me clear that Tolkien,
at the least, wanted the stories to read as myth, i.e. to impress the
reader in the same way as reading the tales of a traditional mythology
would.
The big question, for me, is rather which reader (or audience) he
intended for his readers to feel like.
One possibility, which I think was the original idea, is that he wanted
his mythology to read, to a modern English reader, in the same way as
the old Norse mythology reads to a modern norse reader.
The problem, however, with that view is that it doesn't explain the
transition to the round-world version, which, at best, does nothing for
that -- a modern reader would accept the 'astronomically absurd
business' without problems; he might even slightly expect the mythology
of his ancestors to contain scientifically absurd elements (it is so
nice to feel we've progressed from their 'primitive' views <G>).
> and as such, there's nothing wrong to tinker with the
> presentation" and tell it in a way that is less offending to
> people with a stronger "scientific" background.
In this particular case, it might have worked, I don't know, but I
believe that it would have felt less 'mythical' in a round-world
version. Quite possibly my main problem has nothing to do with Tolkien,
but rather with the Old Norse version of Middle-earth (which, of
course, takes 'astronomically absurd' to new levels <G>).
> It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science
> fiction setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it
> plausible.
But I don't think a retelling of a myth is really itself a myth (it
might be, of course, but recasting it in a scientifically plausible
form would, IMO, make it extremely difficult, as myth will generally,
and almost per definition, contain supernatural elements).
In the case of Tolkien's mythology it would, naturally, not mean a
complete abandonment of supernatural elements (and thus not necessarily
completely plausible scientifically), and he might have retained the
mythical air even then, though I rather suspect that I might not find
it quite as satisfying as the flat-world version.
<snip>
> I didn't read up details on Tolkiens projected idea (where exactly
> is it in HoME?),
It's in the "Myths Transformed" section of /Morgoth's Ring/. The first
few texts are the most relevant.
> but in general, I think one could make an round world creation-
> myth with an 'authentic' feeling without any problem.
In general I agree, and my problem isn't as much the round world per
se, but rather the context in which it would appear (or perhaps I
should just trust Tolkien's ability to work it out).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Öjevind Lång
news:20060911093302...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de...
[snip]
> It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science fiction
> setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it plausible. /The
> Snow Queen/ by Joan D. Vinge may be an interesting example in this
> respect.
Poul Anderson wrote an excellent novella (first published in "The Magazine
of Fantasy and Science Fiction") called "The Queen of Air and Darkness",
where he used Scandinavian and Celtic mythology to great effect though with
a "scientific" denouement at the end which, however, did not dispel the
spirit of the story. A great achievement.
He may have extended the novella into a full-lenght novel later; I am not
sure, and neither am I certain that I would read it. Sometimes such ventures
are disappointing. Though there are, of course, exceptions; when James H.
Schmitz decided to rework his excellent short story "The Witches of Karres"
into a full-length novel, the result was and remains glorious. Read it,
people!
Anderson has also written a short story (I don't remember the title) where
he retells the myth of Orpheus. That was a good one too.
Öjevind
Troels Forchhammer
>>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
>>
>> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far
>> from it.
>
> My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me:
> what about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels
> contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces
> all the essence of fairy-stories" containing the greatest
> eucatastrophe of all, and yet it's certainly one of the most
> powerful cultural myths for Christians.
I seem to be picking my teeth with my toes at the moment ;-)
What I did mean to say is that fairy tales and myth are different ways
of looking at a story. Saying that the story is a fairy-story tells you
nothing about whether it is also a myth and vice-versa. It's like
asking someone's gender and being told it's a Dane . . .
The myth might be also a fairy-story, and it might not be; the two are
independent (even though there are overlaps -- 'supernatural', for
instance).
In all of this, I am of course applying a definition of 'myth' that is
applicable for the old mythologies of Greece, Rome, Scandinavia etc. --
in that sense the myth is part of a mythology (which may contain more
than myths), contains supernatural elements, and deals with beings that
are in some sense 'divine' (I'd accept e.g. Buddha as 'divine' in the
sense that I intend here -- 'superior in kind both to other men and to
the environment of other men' fits, I think, the bill fairly well).
>> Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
>> fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
>> mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective
>> scope in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't
>> think that a myth can work at the highly personalized level of
>> the narrative voice and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The
>> Lord of the Rings/.
>
> I just might make people angry at me for saying this.
Well, not me ;)
> However, I don't think that the narrative voice, or POVs, in LotR
> is as personalized as your statement above might imply.
Perhaps not -- my statement should be seen relative to the
Silmarillion.
> And I think that LotR does have some claim to success as
> a myth, precisely because its voice is actually quite impersonal.
Here I can't agree. First of all the narrative voice is, IMO, rather
personal even if not in the sense of us riding the inside of the
narrator's brain (or usually not). The description of the events is
clearly 'filtered' -- it is mediated by the narrator with a very clear
viewpoint. I don't agree that the readers have necessarily to be privy
to the narrator's thoughts (whether told in first or third person) in
order to be 'highly personalized'.
I still think that the narrative in LotR is too personalized for it to
work as a myth, though possibly the manner of the personalized
viewpoint might also matter. In LotR (and even more in /The Hobbit/)
the Hobbits represent the readers through their anachronisms, and in
particular by they twentieth-century attitudes (ethically, politically
etc.)
> In part this goes back to the difference between LotR and the
> modern novel. I'm sure we've all heard in criticisms of Tolkien
> that his characters are flat and lifeless. Well, in a way, I'm
> standing up to say that this is true. <ducks flying projectiles>
Loose the dogs! ;-)
> That is in comparison to the way characters are revealed in a
> modern novel. Whether 1st person or 3rd, there is a confessional,
> psychological mode of insight into character thought and
> motivation.
Yes. I agree that this 'confessional psychological mode' (wonderful
phrase, BTW! Thanks) is absent, or mostly so, in LotR and TH, but this
pre-occupation with the individual is not what Tolkien wanted, and
therefore that is not what we get.
This, however, does not, to me, mean that the narrative voice cannot
apply a very personal point-of-view, one where the focus is not on the
internal psychology of the narrator (how he, specifically, experience
the events), but rather on the outside events themselves, but mediated,
and to some extent interpreted, by the narrative voice(s).
In both cases the use of a personalized narrative voice require that
the voice is somehow part of the story (this is also true when the
story is told in the third person, but with a clear narrative focus
inside the head of one of the characters, as e.g. with the Harry Potter
books, whose narrative voice is Harry Potter even if the books are told
in the third person). The myth, however, doesn't have that kind of a
narrative voice -- the narrator, if there is a narrator as such, is
always outside the story: looking at the story from a distance (usually
in time).
That is not only true for the old myths (that I know of), but also, to
a large degree, of modern myth (though the narrator can, in some cases,
be someone close to the main protagonist, while still mostly staying
outside the action).
> We are used to being deep inside the characters' heads (or at
> least the protagonist's head) in almost all 20th-century novels.
Any idea when this started? Dostoyevsky, I believe (though I haven't
been able to finish what I've started of his books), use this mode,
doesn't he? Or is his usage less confessional (less emotional
exhibitionism)?
> That doesn't happen in LotR. Yes, we do get an occasional voice
> from inside a character, most often Frodo, always a hobbit; but
> even then it's not a terribly revealing glimpse inside the
> character.
Agreed.
Tolkien generally requires a bit more of his readers; requiring them to
'get to know' the characters by their actions rather than by being told
what they think. Even when we do get access to their thoughts, the
emotional conflicts (and emotional contradictions) that are so often
the motive force in modern novels is, at most, implied -- we're told
how they perceive a specific situation, but we have to extrapolate from
that to more general characteristics.
> It's more often a POV, observational moment.
Exactly. The whole narrative (or nearly so), however, is point-of-
view: it is observational, but mediated by the hobbit characters (even
when e.g. Gimli is telling about the journey with Aragorn in 'The Last
Debate' his narrative is filtered through two layers of hobbits: first
Merry and Pippin listening to the tale, and then Frodo writing it
down). There is not, actually, any hobbits present during the actual
debate for which this chapter is named, but one can easily imagine one
of the present characters (e.g. Gandalf) later telling Frodo what went
on.
But this is precisely the way in which I think the story is
personalized -- by being told consistently from the hobbit point-of-
view (most of it being finally written down by Frodo). Though this is
fundamentally different from the 'confessional psychological mode' (or
one might even call it a 'emotionally exhibitionstic psychological
mode'), it is nevertheless still a very personal voice.
> Even in instances of deep emotion, Sam's "But I love him, whether
> or no", Frodo's "and there is no veil between me and the wheel of
> Fire", we aren't inside the character in the way readers of the
> modern novel have come to expect.
Right.
> Nor does the narrator break into the characters' heads for us, to
> explicate their thoughts and motivations.
How is it the advice goes . . . "show, don't tell", isn't it? ;-)
I know I don't have to defend Tolkien's way of doing it (definitely not
here), but there is one thing that strikes me. Tolkien was obviously
not interested in the emotional tension in his individual characters
(there is emotional tension in the book, but it is spread out to
collective emotions). On the surface of the book, there is preciously
litte inner psychological conflict: Gollum and Frodo stand out as the
obvious examples (even Galadriel's inner conflict has been long
resolved when Frodo finally appears to offer her the Ring, and all she
has to do is to explicate her decision to reject it).
I can understand how readers who are used to the psychologically
exhibitionistic mode of narration can miss the depth implied in the
actions of Tolkien's characters and find them one-dimensional or 'flat
card-board-cuts'.
> That's what critics are trying to express when they call the
> characters in LotR one-dimensional. What is really happening, of
> course, is that Tolkien intentionally wrote this way.
I'm running out of ways to express agreement ;-)
> He was not trying to write a modern novel; he was writing a great
> romance, a fairy story.
Actually that is the words he apply to the story of Beren and Lúthien:
As such the story is (I think a beautiful and powerful)
heroic-fairy-romance, receivable in itself with only a
very general vague knowledge of the background.
[Letter #131, To Milton Waldman, late 1951?]
<http://www.americanidea.org/handouts/06240106.htm>
About the Hobbit tales, he wrote:
But as the earliest Tales are seen through Elvish eyes,
as it were, this last great Tale, coming down from myth
and legend to the earth, is seen mainly though the eyes
of Hobbits: it thus becomes in fact anthropocentric.
[ibid.]
I agree that Tolkien's definition of 'myth' shouldn't prevent us from
using it differently, but at least he did see a significant difference
(and, it would appear, a lower literary mode) between the Silmarillion
stories and the Hobbit-narrated stories.
> And it's this distance from the characters, from self-confession
> and psychological underpinnings, that I think allows enough room
> for us to say that LotR can function as a myth for our times.
To me it is not enough to evoke the mythical air, I'm afraid. I'm not
sure that I can explain it properly (even to myself). The myth require,
I think, a larger distance between the reader and the tale; in LotR and
TH the narrative voice brings the reader very close to the tale by
being, at the same time, a part of the tale, but also very close to the
reader's PoV (this being achieved in part by the anachronisms that I
keep coming back to). These two effects together brings me, the reader,
too close to the story for it to have the 'air' that I associate with a
myth. Increasing either distance could work, though a modern myth is,
I think, more likely to have a viewpoint close to myself (I think it
could be easily argued that we are part of a fandom that is slowly
constructing a modern myth about Tolkien), whereas older myths can have
a narrative voice that is close to the story, but very distant to the
reader (the gospels come to mind).
> (P.S. - Northrup Frye. Urrgh. Tom Shippey and AotC, wonderful!)
LOL!
I'm afraid that my only encounter with the former is through the
latter. I believe I can understand Shippey's choice, at least if he is
serious about his comment that Frye's is 'the most comprehensive
description we have of literary modes'. At least Frye's description has
the advantage of being understandable even to me ;-)
David Gray Porter
news:Xns983DD971...@130.133.1.4...
> Tolkien was obviously
> not interested in the emotional tension in his individual characters
This is a characteristic of people his age and older. Their world was
formed with a pre-WWI sensibility, and it was Victorian. The body is to be
suppressed, and emotions are of the body. Emotional writing then was
"chick-stuff" in today's parlance, stuff for silly women to read. They also
used to think Wagner's music was the ultimate in masculinity and Mozart's
the ultimate in male effeminacy. That's telling.
I have never been able to get into Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novels
either.
Öjevind Lång
news:Tx_Ng.7241$v%4.1...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
[snip]
> I have never been able to get into Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novels
> either.
Then the loss is yours. The stories about Brigadier Gerard are especially
enjoyable, in my opinion.
Öjevind
Troels Forchhammer
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>>
<snip>
>> And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I really think
>> that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale myth"
>> direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
>> cultural identity.
>
> Yes, going by OFS.
I don't know. I think myths (to Tolkien) could be fairy-tales, but
they could also be other than fairy-tales. The myth, for instance,
would not, I imagine, require the eucatastrophe.
> But there's a discussion between he and CSLewis about myth, CSL
> calling them basically lies, and Tolkien disagreeing and comparing
> the historical mode with the mythological, stating that mythology
> is a far superior way of conveying truth. But of course I can't
> locate my reference to that conversation. Da*n.
The situation you describe resembles that which seems to have been
the starting point for 'Mythopoeia', which is printed in /Tree and
Leaf/. I don't know if there's a resume of the actual conversation
anywhere?
<snip>
> What then is necessary to make a story function as myth?
That's not one of the easy ones . . . ;-)
First of all I don't think it's possible to find one definition, or
set of necessary requirements, that would fit all senses of myth, so
I'd be forced to use several sets of criteria.
For the 'old' kind of myth -- the kind that constitute part of the
old mythologies -- the problem is to differentiate between what is
myth and what is legend, saga, epic, saga etc.
In the Norse mythology we have a group of stories about the Aesir,
which are clearly myths, whereas the stories about kings and heroes
are not what I would call myths, but 'sagn' or 'kvad' in Scandinavian
(epic legends often with a supernatural element such as in Beowulf).
Part of my problem is that 'myth' (or the Danish equivalent, "myte")
is not used in everyday Danish language. We would divide into God-
tales and legends ("Gude-fortælling" and "sagn").
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind including some of the Greek and
Roman stories about semi-deities as myth (Hercules comes to mind),
but not Homer's stories (which are some kind of heroic epic-legends).
The story about Romulus and Remus is also clearly a myth, but, I
think, of a different kind -- theirs is a founding myth, which can be
seen even today. We have some founding myths in scouting (about Lord
Baden-Powell and about the ideals of scouting), and Ostadan's essay
mentions something similar in the Esperanto community:
Arguably, Tolkien was wrong about Esperanto -- but for
exactly the right reason. Unlike the other languages he
mentions, Esperanto does indeed have its own mythology.
It does not consist of magical legends, but is a kind of
political mythology of hope, a shared belief among its
speakers that the world would be a better and friendlier
place if everyone in the world could communicate across
borders as easily as Esperantists do, in a language that
belongs to no single nation or people. [...] Many, if not
most, biographies of Zamenhof tend to mythologize his
life, [...]
[Ostadan, "Glossopoeia for Fun and Profit", TheOneRing.net]
<http://greenbooks.theonering.net/ostadan/files/040101.html>
So far I have two kinds of myth.
First the classical myth, dealing with the doings of divine or semi-
divine characters, and which form a part of a pantheistic mythology.
Here it would seem to me enough to require simply that -- that it is
part of a mythology (with all the social, cultural and ethnic
implications that that carries with it) and that it deals with divine
or semi-divine characters.
The founding myth appears to me to carry the same social and cultural
implications as the other kind of myth (though not necessarily ethnic
-- Esperanto-speakers are not an ethnic group). The might simply be a
very idealized self-image: this is what 'we' stand for, this defines
who 'we' are. It need not be false, or have a fixed form: the key is
that it encapsulates a belief held by members of a group (and
possibly outside the group) that in some way helps explain something
about the group. This kind of myth is typically not a part of a
mythology as such (as in a collection of stories that has a somewhat
fixed form).
In all myths, I believe, there need to be a narrative distance
between the story and the reader: the story needs to transcend the
individual level and speak to the reader (or listener) as part of a
group (though, of course, he or she need not actually be a part of
said group).
All this does, I belive, make some progress towards saying what I
think is necessary for a story to function as a myth, although I
can't say that it is very clear, I'm afraid.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are
subtle and quick to anger.
- Gildor Inglorion, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
JimboCat
>But I don't think a retelling of a myth is really itself a myth (it
>might be, of course, but recasting it in a scientifically plausible
>form would, IMO, make it extremely difficult, as myth will generally,
>and almost per definition, contain supernatural elements).
/Lord of Light/ by Roger Zelazny is a re-telling of various Hindu
myths, set on a colonial planet where the "gods" are near-immortal and
very powerful humans, both of these advances being achieved through
mostly technological means. But the supernatural element remains, since
the "gods" develop "powers" over multiple life-spans of time that are
not really explained or justified scientifically.
Nevertheless, /Lord of Light/ does not feel at all like a myth to me.
It is pure science-fiction. Nobody tells these stories around the
campfire or in regular weekly meetings or in grade school classrooms.
To us moderns, "myth" implies some sort of distance for the reader:
some sort of "I really know this is all wrong, but I like it anyway".
This is not exactly the converse of the "willing suspension of
disbelief" that JRRT re-qualifies as sub-creation, but there is, I
think, an important distinction. I can't put my finger on it, though.
Do you think our ancestors, for whom our surviving myths were *the*
myths, viewed these myths the way we currently view *anything*?
I can think of a few candidates. Perhaps they had the same attitude
towards these myths as we do today: thinking of them as great stories,
though of course not literally true, that nevertheless give insight
into the nature of humans and of the divine. Or perhaps they viewed
them in a way similar to the way a religious person today regards their
holy book of choice: as entirely true, if somewhat mysterious and
difficult. Or maybe they took the role that modern myths do, such as
the story all USAians learn in school about Benjamin Franklin flying a
kite in a thunderstorm to prove that lighning is electricity.
A successful sub-creation brings you into the created world without
questioning its veracity. For a myth, however, I don't think the
question of veracity is important at all. The facts of whether Franklin
ever actually flew that kite are irrelevant to the story: you can
believe it's all bunk and still the *point* of the myth comes through
(teaching such things as self-reliance, curiousity, deductive logic,
etc).
We've gone through a whole buncha definitions of "myth", but I'm
beginning to think that it's what you do with it that makes a story
mythical. And the most important aspect of that is that a myth is told,
and re-told, over and over again. Johnny Appleseed is an American myth.
Lord of the Rings is a novel/romance/whatever. Until we get every
schoolkid learning about Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom, in
re-telling after re-telling, that's all it will be. The Silmarillion
may be a better attempt at myth in some ways, but again, we don't have
the story of Beren One-hand and the Great Jewel as part of our general
knowledge and upbringing.
Oh, and by the way, I have to put in a plug here for another favorite
re-telling of a myth: Mary Renault's "The King Must Die" tells the
legend of Theseus and the Minotaur in a very plausible and satisfying
way. And I also like "The Last of the Wine" because I think that any
novel with Socrates in it is a great novel <g>.
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"For six days he had offered many kilowatts of prayer,
but the static kept him from being heard On High."
-- Roger Zelazny, _Lord of Light_
David Gray Porter
news:4mreqrF...@individual.net...
Well, I have a complete Doyle, I'll try that one. Must be in a later
volume.
Dirk Thierbach
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>> And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I really think that
>> for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale myth" direction,
>> and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining cultural identity.
> Yes, going by OFS. But there's a discussion between he and CSLewis about
> myth, CSL calling them basically lies, and Tolkien disagreeing and
> comparing the historical mode with the mythological, stating that
> mythology is a far superior way of conveying truth.
Yes, where "truth" is probably meant in the sense "truth about human
nature". But that just confirms the above, doesn't it? I don't see
why you say "but".
> But of course I can't locate my reference to that
> conversation. Da*n.
I can't seem to remember it. I'd guess it's possibly in Carpenter's
biography (which I read only once).
>> OTOH, I really don't see why everyone has to bow to fashion and write
>> books the way 20th-century novels are written. :-)
> Agreed! I find much to dislike in modern novels. Especially Hemingway
> and Joyce.
Actually, I do like some of Hemingway's short stories, and Joyce
is fun because it's just completely over the top :-) But then I am not
much into analysing things from the "psychological" angle.
> What then is necessary to make a story function as myth?
That depends of course again on what meaning one wants to associate
with "myth". The way Tolkien seems to use it, I think that at its
heart have to be some obversations about human nature, as I have said.
Additionally, I think a certain mode of "presentation" is necessary,
but I am afraid I cannot make this very precise. Sorry. Troels has
shown how the various dictionaries struggle to give a definition, and
there must be a reason that it's not so easy :-)
- Dirk
Dirk Thierbach
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>> Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here -- I
>> have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
>> aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.
> If we're going to use only the sense in which Tolkien uses 'myth',
> that's something other than what I intended.
Yes, of course. The point I was trying to make is that if one starts
with the question "Tolkien said he wanted to make a mythology for
England. Did he succeed?" then it makes more sense to stick to the way
Tolkien uses "myth".
Of course it's perfectly legitimate to ask "Did he succed in making a
myth (in a different sense)?". But then I'd say at least for the
definition of myth as "something that defines people's culture", the
answer is "he didn't". Because to give an affirmative answer in this
case, one must actually point at such a group of people, and I
don't think there's such a group. Even those people who are strongly
into fantasy, role-playing etc. really don't have a lot to do with
the "mythological" basis of LotR.
> But perhaps a more legitimate sense to use on this ng.
At least to me, any sense is fine (but one should clearly say what
one means, it just makes communication easier).
> I do wish we had the references to make this more clear. I know
> nothing whatsoever about philology as a discipline, and so nothing
> about how it might define 'myth'.
In /The Road to Middle-Earth/, Shippey gives a good introduction
in what way philology and Tolkien's writings connect. Worth reading.
I think /Author of the Century/ also mentions this aspect, but not
as much in depth.
> A wonderful book. Both the Vinges are fabulous writers, although I
> wasn't terribly impressed with Vernor's latest book.
Yes, I also like both Vinges. (BTW, everytime I read "Vernor", I think
how it looks just like a phonetical spelling of the common German
first name "Werner". And from his picture, I'd say at least his
grandparents came from Germany :-)
For selfish purposes, what's the title of Vernor's latest book? And
why didn't you like it? So far I found all his books quite
interesting.
- Dirk
Belba Grubb
<snip excellent thoughts and notations>
> In other words, the initial wind direction was from the east, out of Mordor,
> bring the Darkness of Sauron. Then the wind shifted to blow from the south,
> beginning to blow away the clouds and allowing dawn to herald the arrival of
> the Rohirrim at Pelennor. Then the wind continues shifting round the
> compass, blowing south-west as Aragorn and his fleet arrive at Pelennor. The
> wind then settles into a strong West wind that continues to blow away the
> clouds of Mordor for a few days. Then, at the climax of the story, the wind
> swings round again, to blow from the final compass direction, from the
> North. This completes a circle of wind directions. Does anyone know if the
> wind acts like this often in the real world?
Although JRRT was born in the Southern Hemisphere, we have to assume
Northern Hemisphere conditions for Middle-earth. He was pretty young
when he came north, anyway, and probably hadn't developed much of a
feel for southern hemisphere wind patterns.
Anyway, someone in Britain and/or Europe will have to comment on this
as the wind patterns there are unfamiliar to me. The folks in Bermuda
might attest just now, after Florence's passage, that a hurricane
moving up from the south can give you that type of a wind shift.
Perhaps in Europe strong lows (depressions) move from south to north?
But I think all real-world bets are off here. Aragorn and Legolas
started it all with their song to send Boromir off, and Manwe just took
it from there, improvising as he went along (BG).
> I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
> _interesting_! :-)
Indeed!
Barb
chrisk...@hotmail.com
Belba Grubb wrote:
> Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
>
> <snip excellent thoughts and notations>
>
> > In other words, the initial wind direction was from the east, out of Mordor,
> > bring the Darkness of Sauron.
<snip>
> But I think all real-world bets are off here. Aragorn and Legolas
> started it all with their song to send Boromir off, and Manwe just took
> it from there, improvising as he went along (BG).
Rather embarassingly, I forgot that Manwe is the Lord of the Winds. I
got the eagle and Manwe connection, but not the winds and Manwe
connection! Apart from the initial east wind, it does seem likely that
Manwe is doing something here...
And now that you mention it, the song of Aragorn and Legolas about the
West, South and North winds is interesting, and the lack of a mention
of the East wind. But I'm not really sure exactly how to tie that in
with the other wind stuff.
Christopher
(somewhere in Hungary! Now I can tick off another 'ambition' - posting
to the Tolkien Usenet newsgroups from a holiday location...)
Dirk Thierbach
> Anyway, someone in Britain and/or Europe will have to comment on this
> as the wind patterns there are unfamiliar to me. The folks in Bermuda
> might attest just now, after Florence's passage, that a hurricane
> moving up from the south can give you that type of a wind shift.
> Perhaps in Europe strong lows (depressions) move from south to north?
No, the depressions usually move from west to east. But still, as I
have written in another post, one can get the described wind pattern from
that, if the depressions passes to the north of the observer (which
should be common enough in England, because AFAIK the depressions pass
often over the northern part of England).
- Dirk
Troels Forchhammer
<news:1158454471.2...@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
"chrisk...@hotmail.com" <chrisk...@hotmail.com> enriched us
with:
>
> Belba Grubb wrote:
>>
<snip>
>> But I think all real-world bets are off here. Aragorn and
>> Legolas started it all with their song to send Boromir off, and
>> Manwe just took it from there, improvising as he went along (BG).
Aye, something like that, I agree.
The north wind towards the end, in particular, seems to me
'suspicious'. I mean, not only does it help the Eagles get to the
battle in time, but it also seems to emphasize the threat created by
the army of the west (in the interpretation of literally showing which
way the wind is blowing), thus also helping to keep Sauron's attention
on Aragorn's army rather than on the real threat, Frodo and Sam (who
are at that point almost due west of Barad-dūr, although, in a deeply
ironic 'co-incidence' [as they say in Middle-earth] approaching the
heart of Sauron's kingdom, Orodruin, from the north).
> Rather embarassingly, I forgot that Manwe is the Lord of the
> Winds.
Please take good-natured teasing as read ;)
And with winds coming up the Great River, from the Sea and finally down
the Great River, I can't help thinking of Manwė's old mate, Ulmo. It
might not be the Sirion, but still . . .
> I got the eagle and Manwe connection, but not the winds and Manwe
> connection! Apart from the initial east wind, it does seem likely
> that Manwe is doing something here...
Yes, it does rather seem that way. Fooling around with the winds
wouldn't really violate any voluntary limitations on Vala involvement,
would it ;-)
> And now that you mention it, the song of Aragorn and Legolas about
> the West, South and North winds is interesting, and the lack of a
> mention of the East wind. But I'm not really sure exactly how to
> tie that in with the other wind stuff.
The obvious connection is implied by Aragorn's response to Gimli
refusing to sing about the east wind: 'In Minas Tirith they endure the
East Wind, but they do not ask it for tidings.'
What they do is to sing about the good winds (indirectly telling us
which they are) and identify the evil wind. One of my first instincts
when I read your first wind-article was to look at the lament for
Boromir, because I remembered that it ended with the north wind, as did
the "The Black Gate Opens" chapter and I thought the sequence might
have been repeated, but it wasn't.
That, then, leaves simply the winds themselves as being the significant
aspect of the song: in Minas Tirith they'd ask with hope of news from
the winds of the west, south and north, implying, after all, that good
can come from any of those directions.
> (somewhere in Hungary! Now I can tick off another 'ambition' -
> posting to the Tolkien Usenet newsgroups from a holiday
> location...)
I hope you enjoy it (I was disappointed on my holiday when my usual
connection software failed me and I couldn't even log on to Google with
my phone; oh, well -- at least I could read RABT & AFT on Google Groups
with the phone: "usenet addict", that's me <GG>).
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
- /Reaper Man/ (Terry Pratchett)
Pseudonymus al-Faqha'ter III
chrisk...@hotmail.com wrote:
> And now that you mention it, the song of Aragorn and Legolas about the
> West, South and North winds is interesting, and the lack of a mention
> of the East wind. But I'm not really sure exactly how to tie that in
> with the other wind stuff.
Speaking of metereology, what do you think of the thheory that
Luthien's singing affected the position of the sun? Personally, I find
it a little too Christopher-Tolkien for my tastes.
Shanahan
? Reference?
- Ciaran
-----------------------
mooreeffoc
Robert Kolker
>
>
> Speaking of metereology, what do you think of the thheory that
> Luthien's singing affected the position of the sun? Personally, I find
> it a little too Christopher-Tolkien for my tastes.
Considering the mass and distance from the sun one is hard put to accept
that warbling in the direction of the sky can move the sun about. The
sun moves under the influence of gravitation.
Have you ever noticed that the more we understand how the world -really-
works, the less magic we find in it?
Bob Kolker
>
Phlip
> works, the less magic we find in it?
>
> Bob Kolker
Ahem:
"Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went
aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew..."
--
Phlip
http://www.greencheese.us/ZeekLand <-- NOT a blog!!!
Robert Kolker
>>Have you ever noticed that the more we understand how the world -really-
>>works, the less magic we find in it?
>>
>>Bob Kolker
>
>
> Ahem:
>
> "Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went
> aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew..."
And Frodo's ship proceeded on straight line lying in a plane tangent to
the (now round) earth at the Havens. Something is not right here! By the
time the ship cleared the headwaters it was sailing 20 feet above the sea.
Bob Kolker
Phlip
>> "Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went
>> aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew..."
>
> And Frodo's ship proceeded on straight line lying in a plane tangent to
> the (now round) earth at the Havens. Something is not right here! By the
> time the ship cleared the headwaters it was sailing 20 feet above the sea.
And you have never once experienced a gentle ripple in the breeze,
responding to a change in your moods. ;-)
(Actually there's a perfectly rational physics explanation for the Straight
Path - it's a quantum wormhole. But that doesn't explain how a ship can
bring air with it, or can avoid being crushed into the shape of a fishing
line...)
Count Menelvagor
Robert Kolker wrote:
> Pseudonymus al-Faqha'ter III wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Speaking of metereology, what do you think of the thheory that
> > Luthien's singing affected the position of the sun? Personally, I find
> > it a little too Christopher-Tolkien for my tastes.
>
> Considering the mass and distance from the sun one is hard put to accept
> that warbling in the direction of the sky can move the sun about. The
> sun moves under the influence of gravitation.
i would take any and all of the theories expounded by pseudo with about
a ton of salt. the sun is in reality a wild balrog party.
> Have you ever noticed that the more we understand how the world -really-
> works, the less magic we find in it?
nah.
Troels Forchhammer
<news:20060915080357...@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
>>
>> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>>>
>>> And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I really think
>>> that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale myth"
>>> direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
>>> cultural identity.
>>
>> Yes, going by OFS. But there's a discussion between he and
>> CSLewis about myth, CSL calling them basically lies, and Tolkien
>> disagreeing and comparing the historical mode with the
>> mythological, stating that mythology is a far superior way of
>> conveying truth.
>
> Yes, where "truth" is probably meant in the sense "truth about
> human nature". But that just confirms the above, doesn't it? I
> don't see why you say "but".
I think you're constructing a false dichotomy. I don't think that
there is any difference between 'contemporary myth' and 'ancient
myth' in the way they relate to 'truth' -- both as a general thing,
as a culturally defining thing (there are, obviously, other
differences between contemporary and ancient myths).
Actually I would argue that if there is any single factor that
/unites/ myth, whatever their context, it is their relation to truth
and their function in defining and delimiting a 'culture' (in any
sense -- there is a 'culture', for instance, among both Tolkien fans
and Esperanto speakers, just as there is [I posit] a Danish culture).
I do agree that Tolkien's use of 'myth' and 'mythical' implies (as I
see it) the older kind of myth: the myths that defined cultural
identity in terms of stories about divine beings, rather than the
contemporary myth (which has to be plausible).
As an interesting aside, the ancient myths have been taken up again
and incorporated into contemporary myth, in the sense of defining a
cultural identity as those whose ancestors believed the old myths,
and who, even today, know the old myths to some extent. This has been
going on in Denmark for something like two hundred years now --
defining ourselves as the descendants of those who believed in the
old Norse mythology, and I believe it is taking place also in e.g.
Greece.
<snip>
>> But of course I can't locate my reference to that conversation.
>> Da*n.
>
> I can't seem to remember it. I'd guess it's possibly in
> Carpenter's biography (which I read only once).
It is. Humphrey Carptenty, /JRR Tolkien: A Biography/, Part 4, ch. IV
'Jack' -- p 197 in my black paperback HarperCollins edition.
Carpenter's account of the conversation is, as he says (on the page
given), "based on Tolkien's poem 'Mythopoeia', to which he also gave
the titles 'Misomythos' and Philomyth to Misomyth'." The poem is
printed in /Tree and Leaf/ and probably also elsewhere.
Carpenter also says:
In expounding this belief in the inherent /truth/ of
mythology, Tolkien had laid bare the centre of his
philosophy as a writer, the creed that is at the heart of
/The Silmarillion/.
[ibid. p. 198]
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you
haven't understood it yet.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> There isn't a solid working definition of myth, but I agree that a
> myth usually survives because it is adaptable to varying
> interpretations within a culture over time.
I haven't had time to read through this thread properly, but the idea of one
of the important characteristics of a myth being that it is told and retold,
but still retains some central elements in all versions, is, I think, an
important one. I was brought up on retellings of the Greek, Egyptian and
Norse myths (the ones by Roger Lancelyn Green, someone who knew and
corresponded with Tolkien), and the concept comes over very strongly that
these are stories that are indeed, told and retold down the ages. Another
example is the Arthurian legends (I tend to use the word legends for stories
closer to our own times, though other definitions are probably more
helpful).
> Personally, I subscribe to the view taken by Robert Graves, that many
> myths are representations of religious rituals or historical events,
> which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure. Whether or
> not that is the case, I have always been interested in repeated themes
> and devices in mythology, such as fruit (Persephone eating the
> pomegranate, Freia cultivating apples of eternal youth), the various
> events that lead up to the death of a god or god-like hero (Baldur or
> Herakles), or the preservation of a childhood object that later proves
> a hidden identity (Moses' swaddling cloth, Orestes sandal etc).
What about the way that various historical figures try (sometimes
successfully) to build a myth around themselves using such devices, or the
way later people mythologise such figures? People like Ramesses the Great,
Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan? Or even Julius Caesar, George
Washington and William Wallace?
> I have a tentative list of such things from Tolkien. Although there is
> no arguing that any of these things conform to the Robert Graves
> definition, there is a wonderful pattern of symbolic repetition which
> is reminiscent of myth, whether intentional or not. In my list, I am
> not arguing for how Tolkien's themes relate to any other mythology,
> but only the repetition within his own.
That's interesting. Your lists are fascinating, but what I like is the way
that you say you are steering clear of finding relations to other
mythologies, and are instead focussing on how the meta-structure and
repetition is similar to that of mythologies in general. I did something
similar with numbers, where I surveyed the use of certain numbers in
Tolkien's works and concluded that the way Tolkien used numbers (the
repetition and linkages) gave a feel of authenticity to his work, imbuing it
with another layer of realism like that found in genuine stories and
mythologies. Maybe I should have used the phrase "mythological realism"! :-)
I did also start to look at specific comparisons and uses of numbers, but
that was too large a task and finding evidence for actual comparisons and
inspirations was usually not possible. The generalised, "Tolkien's style
recreates the feel of myth", seems sufficient.
Christopher
Troels Forchhammer
>> Shanahan <pog...@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's
>>> (early) stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was
>>> it ever achievable?
>>
>> I'd say he came pretty close.
>
> I'd say that LotR succeeded in this regard, but the Silm. tales
> did not. (see below)
>
>> And in any case, Tolkien seems to have imitated the process
>> rather well.
>
> Oh yes! No argument there! But the question I'm asking is, did the
> imitation 'take' -- i.e., is it *functioning* as a myth functions
> in a culture?
Here I think you also need to ask what kind of myth.
As I've tried to indicate, the old myths still have a function in
modern society and culture, but not in the original sense, nor in the
sense of contemporary myths.
Myth, in the original context, has to be believed -- the explanations
offered has to be accepted within the context of the culture it
springs from. That is true for the ancient myths about Thor or
Hercules as well as for modern myths such as 'the brotherhood of
scouts' or 'the American Dream' (it might also be believed outside
the cultural context it belongs to -- I suppose that it is only made
stronger if it is believed by others as well).
The ancient myths, in their modern context, are 'believed' in a
different way. They are seen as a heritage, and the shared belief is
that they still have something to tell the modern descendants of
those who did believe in them (so much so, in fact, that there is
today a growing number of people reviving actual faith in the old
mythologies: the Asatru is back).
I suggest that in the sense of original myth, neither of the two
classes of his tales really work. Neither the body of tales in the
Silmarillion mythology or the hobbit stories are really plausible
enough to be believed in a modern English context (or a context
contemporary with their composition).
I am unsure whether Tolkien really wanted his stories to work as myth
in their 'natal' context, although his insistence to rewrite the
myths to a less 'astronomically absurd' version does, admittedly,
imply as much.
However, I would venture that it was mainly, and originally, in the
sense of ancient myth in a modern context that Tolkien intended his
tales to work as 'a mythology for the English' -- and possibly even
more specifically in a philological sense. Tolkien had strong
opinions about the relation between a language and the stories that
are told in that language, and I suspect that the primary sense in
which Tolkien meant to create a mythology for the English was the
philological: a body of stories that could possibly have interacted
(in an imaginary time-line) with early English language to produce
the English language of Tolkien's own days, and, possibly more
importantly, the fragmentary stories, poems etc. in Old English that
he knew and loved. I believe that it was mainly in this sense of an
ancient mythology in a modern context; as something the ancestors of
the English could have believed.
<snip>
> Perhaps we're using different definitions of 'myth'.
And perhaps not only 'different', but also 'several' mixed together
;-)
> For example, English-speakers commonly use the word 'myth' to
> describe old stories of the gods, whether Greco-Roman, Norse,
> Celtic, tribal, etc.
Yes. I would say that this is the sense which Tolkien, as I
understand him, uses the word (both 'myth' and 'mythical') when he
described e.g. the entry of Men upon the Silmarillion scene: "As the
stories become less mythical, and more like stories and romances, Men
are interwoven."
> This usage of the word implies that these are ancient tales which
> don't carry much modern relevance; although they may express some
> truths about universal human nature, they don't really have much
> to say about the modern world.
I disagree that they don't carry much modern relevance.
The old Norse Mythology still carries a lot of relevance to modern
Danes (and, I suppose, Swedes, Norwegians, Faroese, Icelanders as
well). The old Norse mythology was the pivotal point of the National
Romantic Movement in the nineteenth century, and is still a key
element in the national identity -- even to the point where the old
faith is a recognized faith with a growing group of followers.
I am not sure how to explain this -- except perhaps to refer to it as
a myth of a mythology: the old mythology is believed to be able to
still tell something important a Nordic character. Even for the vast
majority who don't believe in the Asir, it is believed to be
culturally defining.
It is my impression that something similar is happening for other of
the ancient European mythologies, but I don't know enough about it to
be sure.
<snip>
> The anthropological definition of myth posits that a true myth, a
> living myth if you will, *does* carry strong current meaning for
> the society that tells the myth.
But that cannot be enough, though. As I said, the old Norse mytholgy,
even in itself, does indeed 'carry strong current meaning for the
society that tells the myth', but I wouldn't call it a living myth
because it is not really believed (outside a small community of
Asatrú).
Belief is, IMO, a central element in what we have called a 'living
myth' -- without a strong belief in the veracity of the myth it might
be a culturally powerful and influential story, but not a myth (IMO).
<snip>
There's yet another usage of 'myth' that I think we need to consider
(I'll be getting to it): the belief that is considered false by the
general public such that the belief itself defines it's own sub-
culture or sub-society. There are, for instance, a number of
conspiracy theories that are taking on the characteristics of myth in
this definition.
> So the question I was trying to get at could be better rephrased
> as: Did Tolkien succeed in creating a real, living, myth for
> England / for his readers? Does the mythos of the Silmarillion
> tales function in the deeper anthropological sense as a myth?
No -- neither with the Silmarillion tales or the Hobbit stories.
<snip>
> I'd say Tolkien both succeeded and failed. Succeeded, because I
> think LotR *is* beginning to function as a true myth, for far more
> than just England.
I've said already that I would disagree based on my requirement that
the people actually believe the myth, and no one (that I know of, at
least) actually believes that Frodo brought an evil, powerfully
magical Ring to a volcano where his finger was bitten off . . .
But if you forgo the requirement of belief, and speak only about a
story that 'does carry a strong current meaning for the society that
tells the myth', then you will first have to identify the society.
LotR was, of course, initially told by Tolkien, but can we identify
today a group that retelling LotR as more than just a good tale, but
as a story that carries a strong current meaning?
Sadly my first thought is to the racist groups who read, and tell,
LotR as supporting their abhorrent ideas, but I take it that that is
not what you mean ;)
> Failed, because the Silmarillion tales do not, and also because
> what success LotR has had as a myth applies across so much more
> than just English culture.
Once again I believe it depends a lot on what sense of the word myth
you use. In the sense in which I see e.g. the old Norse myths
functioning in current Danish society (and they certainly do have
more than one strong current meaning in our society), I think that
the Silmarillion is more successful than LotR, but in the
philological sense that I've tried to pin down (and which, as I've
said, I believe to have been at the front of Tolkien's intention), I
think that they are both equally strong.
<snip>
>> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he
>> tries to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative
>> world that would have been really possible instead of "just a
>> story".
>
> Well, yes. But what would his motivation have been in doing that?
> It seems to me that in making ME more like a really possible
> world, the round-earth version would have made the Silmarillion
> tales a more likely candidate for a living myth.
Now it's your turn to invoke plausibility ;)
It is, to me, quite clear that Tolkien would never want any of his
readers to actually believe in the mythology he created: he was
himself firmly rooted in Christianity and would never have wanted to
write a mythology to replace the Christian one.
With that in mind, reading his declarations in letter #131:
But an equally basic passion of mine /ab initio/ was for
myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all
for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history,
of which there is far too little in the world (accessible
to me) for my appetite. I was an undergraduate before
thought and experience revealed to me that these were not
divergent interests -- opposite poles of science and
romance -- but integrally related. I am /not/ 'learned'[+]
in the matters of myth and fairy-story, however, for in such
things (as far as known to me) I have always been seeking
material, things of a certain tone and air, and not simple
knowledge. Also -- and here I hope I shall not sound absurd
-- I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own
beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up
with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I
sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other
lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic,
Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but
nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of
course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but
powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized,
associated with the soil of Britain but not with English;
and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one
thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical,
incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important
thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the
Christian religion.
[+] Though I have thought /about/ them a good deal.
[Letter #131, To Milton Waldman, late 1951?]
<http://www.americanidea.org/handouts/06240106.htm>
I cannot read this any other way than that Tolkien was referring to
the air and the function ('bound up with its tongue and soil' as he
writes) of those other mythologies when he wrote, later in that
letter, that he 'had a mind to make a body of more or less connected
legend' dedicated simply 'to England; to my country'. He could not
bind the legends to the English history retroactively, but he could
bind it up with the English soil (though in the end this aspect was
reduced) and he was uniquely qualified to bind it up with the English
language /as if/ they had always been bound up together.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
- /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)
JimboCat
>Myth, in the original context, has to be believed -- the explanations
>offered has to be accepted within the context of the culture it
>springs from. That is true for the ancient myths about Thor or
>Hercules as well as for modern myths such as 'the brotherhood of
>scouts' or 'the American Dream'
I'm not at all sure I agree with that. It has certainly been
fashionable among modern intellectuals to imagine that the ancients had
a childlike credulity, and took their own myths quite literally, but is
there any evidence for that?
Today, the "American Dream" is universally ridiculed among
intellectuals and also among young people in general (though I'll grant
it is unconsciously accepted without question by a fair proportion of
people around the world -- not just Americans). I suspect it was always
the same with myths of all kinds. Some in the ancient world accepted
without question the stories of the gods, but the intelligentsia,
though they may have *used* the myths for their own purposes, have
always had a healthy skepticism about them.
No, I don't think that a myth has to be literally believed. Not by
everybody. Probably not even by a majority. Rather, to qualify as a
myth, it has merely to be persistently told and re-told, and to have
some sort of nebulously-defined "cultural significance". <g>
>I suggest that in the sense of original myth, neither of the two
>classes of his tales really work. Neither the body of tales in the
>Silmarillion mythology or the hobbit stories are really plausible
>enough to be believed in a modern English context (or a context
>contemporary with their composition).
I agree with your conclusion, but not with your reasoning. The
plausibility of a myth is irrelevant. People will believe six
impossible things before breakfast, no problem. How many people believe
in alien abduction, or in various conspiracy theories or "free-energy"
schemes or telepathy or communication with the dead? Plausibility has
nothing to do with belief, except among the tiny proportion of
scientifically-literate skeptics (you've read sci.physics: you *know*
what I'm talking about!).
>I suspect that the primary sense in
>which Tolkien meant to create a mythology for the English was the
>philological: a body of stories that could possibly have interacted
>(in an imaginary time-line) with early English language to produce
>the English language of Tolkien's own days, and, possibly more
>importantly, the fragmentary stories, poems etc. in Old English that
>he knew and loved. I believe that it was mainly in this sense of an
>ancient mythology in a modern context; as something the ancestors of
>the English could have believed.
I agree with all of the above *except* the final phrase: I don't see
how that follows from the preceeding at all. What does belief have to
do with it?
>Belief is, IMO, a central element in what we have called a 'living
>myth' -- without a strong belief in the veracity of the myth it might
>be a culturally powerful and influential story, but not a myth (IMO).
Well, it's ok to have differing opinions, of course. But the reasoning
behind them is what's interesting... I think my own opinion on [part of
the] the proper definition of "myth" -- that belief doesn't matter, but
that re-telling is essential -- is based on introspection: I don't
"believe" the same things all the time. Yet a myth is always a myth.
Hmm. Or something like that. I may change my mind later. <ggg>
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"If it doesn't have an omnipotent transcendant being that created the
universe and ensouled mankind, weekly church services, a heirarchy of
clerics, a moral code based around the Golden Rule with a side order of
submission to authority, and eternal happiness in the afterlife for
everyone who goes to church and adheres to the moral code, it isn't
"really" a religion."
-- John Schilling
Troels Forchhammer
<news:1158856226.2...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>
"JimboCat" <10313...@compuserve.com> enriched us with:
> The Honorable Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
>> Myth, in the original context, has to be believed -- the
>> explanations offered has to be accepted within the context of the
>> culture it springs from. That is true for the ancient myths about
>> Thor or Hercules as well as for modern myths such as 'the
>> brotherhood of scouts' or 'the American Dream'
>
> I'm not at all sure I agree with that. It has certainly been
> fashionable among modern intellectuals to imagine that the
> ancients had a childlike credulity, and took their own myths quite
> literally, but is there any evidence for that?
Only the evidence implied by every other religious mythology.
In particular the evidence about the Norse mythology from Arab and
Christian sources show that they did believe in and worship the gods. I
fail to see any reason why they should disbelieve any of the particular
myths -- nothing in the myths basically contradicted their experience.
Their general cosmological knowledge was, despite a certain practical
skill at calculating solar and lunar events (from equinoxes and
solstices even to eclipses), close to non-existant (for instance
geocentric world-views were the norm until about AD1600).
The accusation of 'childlike credulity' for belief in the myths (and
even in the larger mythologies) is, IMO, baseless -- the accusation of
credulity of any kind can only be applied to people who ought, or at
least has the possibility, to know better, but there is nothing to
imply that the ancient peoples we discuss here had access to such
knowledge.
Insofar as we're speaking of the pantheistic mythologies, I think that
parallels to historical and contemporary religious practices quite
clearly show that literal belief in the myths was, indeed, an essential
part of the function of the myths within their original social and
cultural contexts.
If you want that, we might turn to people who can maintain literal
beliefs in scientifically absurd myths despite the results of modern
science.
> Today, the "American Dream" is universally ridiculed among
> intellectuals and also among young people in general (though I'll
> grant it is unconsciously accepted without question by a fair
> proportion of people around the world -- not just Americans).
I am not an American, nor have I studied it much, so I cannot really
say with any kind of certainty.
That said, however, I've noticed a tendency when Danish television
shows interviews with people on the street in America -- in particular
in the poorest parts of the great cities -- that many of the people
interviewed seem to blame themselves for remaining poor, because they
believe that they could, if only they'd go for it, have become rich.
Based on that, admittedly fragmentary at best, picture, to which I am
exposed, my impression is that the 'American Dream' is still very much
believed in, although possibly the belief is strongest within the
groups that have the most need for a dream, a hope, of a better life.
Among those who have already achieved that better life, the realisation
of the dream can even, to some extent, be seen as a threat of their
privileges.
> I suspect it was always the same with myths of all kinds. Some in
> the ancient world accepted without question the stories of the
> gods, but the intelligentsia, though they may have *used* the
> myths for their own purposes, have always had a healthy skepticism
> about them.
I can, however, agree with that. It is not everybody in the society
that shares a myth that actually does or has to believe in it, but for
the myth to have the power we speak of, it has to be believed (and
fairly literally as well), by a majority of the 'commoners' (the elite
and the intelligentsia are, I think, the most likely to be sceptical
about, at least, the literal truth -- but it is only in the last
hundred years or so that this group has grown big -- earlier it was
just a negligible fraction of the population).
> No, I don't think that a myth has to be literally believed. Not by
> everybody. Probably not even by a majority.
I'd argue that for it to become a myth it has to be believed by a vast
majority. Belief may then decline until the point where it is, to the
majority, just a good story with some kind of other meaning.
The Genesis could be a good example of that. It is clearly, in origin,
a cosmogonical myth, and whether the Church leaders themselves actually
believed it or not, the preaching to the masses was that this was
literal truth. Most people have long since abandoned that, although
there are still people who do believe it to be literal truth, but even
those who reject the literal interpretation may see some applicability
in the story.
In large parts of the Christian world, the Christian myths are being
disbelieved, so that they are no longer, IMO, 'living myths', but have
become myths at the same level as e.g. the Greek myths -- not something
we believe any longer, but which may still have a cultural
significance. The important part in this kind of myth, however, is that
it has been literally believed (and to some extent still is).
> Rather, to qualify as a myth, it has merely to be persistently
> told and re-told, and to have some sort of nebulously-defined
> "cultural significance". <g>
I guess that takes us back to the definition of 'myth'.
To me it simply can not be a myth unless it is both plausible and
actually believed in the society where it originates. Otherwise it is a
story (whether a legend, a saga, a tale, a lay or some other form),
regardless of it's metaphorical 'truth'.
It could be interesting to have some kind of test example, but I cannot
think of any story that this kind of 'cultural significance', which has
not been, in its native context, been believed to be literally true,
even if this belief has since evaporated wholly or partially.
<snip>
>> Belief is, IMO, a central element in what we have called a 'living
>> myth' -- without a strong belief in the veracity of the myth it
>> might be a culturally powerful and influential story, but not a
>> myth (IMO).
>
> Well, it's ok to have differing opinions, of course. But the
> reasoning behind them is what's interesting...
Aye.
It's frustrating to discuss a subject only to discover that the other
person has understood something different by it all along.
I can agree that re-telling (and preferably an oral tradition) is
important for myths, so that part doesn't create a problem. Where we
differ seem to be my insistence that belief is essential.
> I think my own opinion on [part of the] the proper definition of
> "myth" -- that belief doesn't matter, but that re-telling is
> essential -- is based on introspection:
We can always haggle on about words, but that would probably not be
very constructive ;-)
Can you think of a good test example? Something that you would call a
myth, but which was not believed in its native social and cultural
context? It would probably be much better to see whether the difference
has an practical implication (I might agree that it's a myth because I
think it was actually believed, in which case that would be question we
should discuss, if we want to delve into it further).
> I don't "believe" the same things all the time.
The transient nature of beliefs in modern (and, I think, particularly
post-modern) society is, I find, something specific to contemporary
thinking, rather than to human nature in a larger view.
If you look a few hundred years back, society was far more stable, and
everybody (or so nearly everybody as to make no practical difference)
inherited their parents social status, their jobs and their beliefs --
both the official beliefs (e.g. Christianity), but also the
folkloristic beliefs (in elfs, trolls, the witch down by the lake etc.
etc.).
> Yet a myth is always a myth. Hmm. Or something like that.
Though not, I'd say, always in the same sense.
I think we might need to qualify our use of 'myth' rather than attempt
to come up with a definition that fits all. I think, for instance, that
there are some fundamental differences between the myth of Europa in
its original context, and the same myth in a present-day context --
even within the descendant culture and society.
> I may change my mind later. <ggg>
I'm open to changing as well ;-)
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
- Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.
William de Hikelyng >
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> Can you think of a good test example? Something that you would call a
> myth, but which was not believed in its native social and cultural
> context? It would probably be much better to see whether the difference
> has an practical implication (I might agree that it's a myth because I
> think it was actually believed, in which case that would be question we
> should discuss, if we want to delve into it further).
Sure- the "classical" Arthurian legendarium, ie the Arthurian stuff as it
was developed in the late Middle Ages, from the trouveres to Malory.
While I will concede that contemporaries had no doubt that Arthur was King
at Camelot, with the Round Table and Guinevere and so on, at the same time
they were quite sensible enough to realize that the fantastical tales
surrounding them were, indeed, tales. Real working knights knew darn well
that riding off on errantry for a year and a day "without so much as a
cake" was preposterous- not to mention all those damosels who seemed to
have nothing better to do than hang out at fountains and crossroads,
waiting for wandering knights. All of the enchantments, temporary
beheadings, vanishing castles and on and on were perfectly well understood
by the audience to be fancies, not some sort of authentic history- yet I
would argue that the Matter of Britain is, nonetheless, a myth.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Troels Forchhammer
"William de Hikelyng >" <"<icelofangeln"@mindspring.com> (2) enriched
us with:
> On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 11:27:32 -0400, Troels Forchhammer
> <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> Can you think of a good test example? Something that you would
>> call a myth, but which was not believed in its native social and
>> cultural context?
> Sure- the "classical" Arthurian legendarium, ie the Arthurian
> stuff as it was developed in the late Middle Ages, from the
> trouveres to Malory.
I wouldn't call that 'myth' in any sense of the word. /Le Morte
d'Arthur/ was, I think, a classic romance (or romantic epic, whatever),
but always intended as 'just a story'. The underlying legends may have
had a mythical beginning or mythical elements, I don't know, but that
would lie prior to Malory.
<snip>
> yet I would argue that the Matter of Britain is, nonetheless,
> a myth.
I'm not sure entirely what you mean by the 'Matter of Britain', so I
can't really comment on that.
If you look at the whole body of Arthurian legends and literature, then
there might certainly be mythical elements to it; either by myths
incorporated into the body of Arthurian stories or by single elements
being taken up and transformed into a mythical state in their own
right. In both cases the mythical aspect would not be depending on the
Athurian context. There might also be other kinds of mythical elements
or myths that spring from these tales, but I'd hesitate to call any of
those that I've read (that, however, is very few, inded) actual myths
themselves.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.
- /Small Gods/ (Terry Pratchett)
Steve Morrison
> I'm not sure entirely what you mean by the 'Matter of Britain', so I
> can't really comment on that.
It means the Arthurian legends. A twelfth-century French poet named
Jean Bodel said that there were three cycles of legends which
everyone should know: the Matter of Rome (Greek/Roman mythology and
heroic stories), the Matter of France (Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver,
etc.), and the Matter of Britain. Christopher uses the term in a
footnote on p. 216 of /Sauron Defeated/ (one of the footnotes to "The
Notion Club Papers") and he sometimes refers to his father's
Legendarium as "the Matter of Middle-earth".
Belba Grubb
> Pseudonymus al-Faqha'ter III wrote:
>
> > Speaking of metereology, what do you think of the thheory that
> > Luthien's singing affected the position of the sun? Personally, I find
> > it a little too Christopher-Tolkien for my tastes.
>
> Considering the mass and distance from the sun one is hard put to accept
> that warbling in the direction of the sky can move the sun about. The
> sun moves under the influence of gravitation.
So...it was her dancing, then. ;^)
> Have you ever noticed that the more we understand how the world -really-
> works, the less magic we find in it?
Oh, you had to say that. Sigh. I just can't resist a major G.K.
Chesterton quote here; please pardon the formatting slip-ups. It is
relevant both because of the Grimm's Law reference (which JRRT
certainly must have appreciated) and also because I think there is more
of that "logic of fairyland" in /The Lord of the Rings/ than in /The
Silmarillion,/ and that while writing LOTR, JRRT remained remarkably
close to the memory of what we have all forgotten for an incredibly
extended time. This may have all contributed to the sense of
"life-blood" that is not quite the same for /The Silmarillion/, even
though much intellectual energy and time were certainly spent upon that
latter work. There is more of that "elementary wonder" (for me anyway)
in the former work. That's what I was getting at with Frodo's surprise
at seeing a flat ceiling over him when he awoke in Rivendell.
There are certain sequences
or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are,
in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the
true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and
merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most
reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity.
For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella,
it is (in an iron and awful sense) NECESSARY that Cinderella is
younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it.
Haeckel may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases:
it really must be. If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is
the father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne:
and we in fairyland submit. If the three brothers all ride horses,
there are six animals and eighteen legs involved: that is
true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. But as I put my
head over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the
natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed
that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things
that happened--dawn and death and so on--as if THEY were
rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees
bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one
trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference
by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination.
You cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can
easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them
growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail.
These men in spectacles spoke much of a man named Newton,
who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a law. But they
could not be got to see the distinction between a true law,
a law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling. If the
apple hit Newton's nose, Newton's nose hit the apple. That is
a true necessity: because we cannot conceive the one occurring
without the other. But we can quite well conceive the apple
not falling on his nose; we can fancy it flying ardently through
the air to hit some other nose, of which it had a more definite
dislike.
We have always in our fairy tales kept this sharp distinction
between the science of mental relations, in which there really
are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there are
no laws, but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles,
but not in mental impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk
climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all confuse our
convictions on the philosophical question of how many beans
make five.
Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the
nursery tales. The man of science says, "Cut the stalk, and
the apple will fall"; but he says it calmly, as if the one idea
really led up to the other. The witch in the fairy tale says,
"Blow the horn, and the ogre's castle will fall"; but she does
not say it as if it were something in which the effect
obviously arose out of the cause. Doubtless she has given the
advice to many champions, and has seen many castles fall,
but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason.
She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary
mental connection between a horn and a falling tower. But the
scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a
necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree
and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if
they had found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth
connecting those facts. They do talk as if the connection of
two strange things physically connected them philosophically.
They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly
follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow
make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a white
answer.
In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of
science they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call
some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced
the alphabet, Grimm's Law. But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual
than Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly
tales;
while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the
nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we
have noticed some of the effects. If there is a law that
pick-pockets
shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable
mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of
picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why
we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot
say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say
why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As IDEAS, the egg
and the chicken are further off from each other than the bear
and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken,
whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then,
that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we
should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales,
not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the "Laws of Nature."
When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn,
we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if
Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes
fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC.
It is not a "law," for we do not understand its general formula.
It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening
practically,
we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no
argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we count
on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it;
we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as
we do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet.
We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle,
and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle,
and therefore an exception. All the terms used in the science books,
"law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really
unintellectual,
because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are
the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment."
They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill
because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.
I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical.
We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale
language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is
the only way I can express in words my clear and definite
perception that one thing is quite distinct from another;
that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.
It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who
is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly
a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense,
that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has
so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there
must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas,
whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to
dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable
to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is
no connection, except that one has seen them together.
A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom,
because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of
his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals
his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark
association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples.
But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why,
in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips;
it sometimes does in his country.
This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy
derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of
the fairy tales is derived from this. Just as we all like love
tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like
astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient
instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when
we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only
need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven
is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon.
But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened
a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales
--because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about
the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel
could be read without boring him. This proves that even
nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest
and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to
refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green.
They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one
wild moment, that they run with water. I have said that this
is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this
point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is
Ignorance.
We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances,
the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man
walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything;
only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man
in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may
understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant
than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou
shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity;
we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we
really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and
practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead
levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that
we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful
instant we remember that we forget.
-- G. K. Chesterton, /Orthodoxy/
Barb
Robert Kolker
> Robert Kolker wrote:
>
>>Pseudonymus al-Faqha'ter III wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Speaking of metereology, what do you think of the thheory that
>>>Luthien's singing affected the position of the sun? Personally, I find
>>>it a little too Christopher-Tolkien for my tastes.
>>
>>Considering the mass and distance from the sun one is hard put to accept
>>that warbling in the direction of the sky can move the sun about. The
>>sun moves under the influence of gravitation.
>
>
> So...it was her dancing, then. ;^)
Dancing is volitional rythmic behaviour by sentient beings. The Universe
is mostly dead (or at least non-living, non-sentient). Nature is as dumb
as a sackful of rocks. The Mystics see life and spirit where there are
only atoms moving in the Void. Democratus was right. If you see a Moving
Spirit in the world you are only seeing your own delusions.
Bob Kolker
Belba Grubb
Ah, a dreadfully serious iconoclast and a true mystic, as defined by
Chesterton in the quote you don't admit here, bound up in the nets of
codified sentimentalities that other, equally serious iconoclasts and
mystics have agreed to refer to as Laws and treat as if they actually
existed and were in effect.
What in the name of all Wonder are you doing in a Tolkien
discussion?!!!
If it's written in the canon somewhere (it is?) that Luthien could
change the sun's position with a song, then it was because Arien liked
the sound of her voice. Simple.
The trouble with our world is that we have no Tom Bombadil dancing
around its edges to rescue us when we get in over our heads and to
remind us of what we have forgotten by answering our questions with
nothing but his own name and assuring us that's the only answer there
is. Once we can accept that, then we have crossed the border (or
returned Home) and all Faerie lies around us, for good and for evil.
It's not a reasonable thing to ask of us, but what a terrible fate it
is to be unable to meet Old Tom's challenge and thus be condemned by
one's own will (and, dare I say it, failure of imagination) to a
"mostly dead" Universe (a creaky old voice is heard emanating from the
general direction of the Milky Way: "I'm not dead yet and YOU are the
proof of that!") and a dumb sack of rocks.
Barb
Robert Kolker
>
> It's not a reasonable thing to ask of us, but what a terrible fate it
> is to be unable to meet Old Tom's challenge and thus be condemned by
> one's own will (and, dare I say it, failure of imagination) to a
> "mostly dead" Universe (a creaky old voice is heard emanating from the
> general direction of the Milky Way: "I'm not dead yet and YOU are the
> proof of that!") and a dumb sack of rocks.
That "creaky voice" comes from within. It is an auditory hallucination.
I have no problem with toying with the idea there is a meaning to
existence. It is mental play which we all need from time to time. But
that is not excuse to confuse this playful nonsense with reality. There
is Nobody Out There to answer our prayers to to speak with us. We have
to do that for ourselve. The still small voice within is our own.
We are all made of stuhr-stuff cooked up in the belly of billyuns and
billyuns of stuhrs. The Cosmos was and always will be all that there is.
Bob Kolker
Jette Goldie
"Robert Kolker" <now...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:CLidnfW7eq0ax4jY...@comcast.com...
> Belba Grubb wrote:
>
>>
>> It's not a reasonable thing to ask of us, but what a terrible fate it
>> is to be unable to meet Old Tom's challenge and thus be condemned by
>> one's own will (and, dare I say it, failure of imagination) to a
>> "mostly dead" Universe (a creaky old voice is heard emanating from the
>> general direction of the Milky Way: "I'm not dead yet and YOU are the
>> proof of that!") and a dumb sack of rocks.
>
> That "creaky voice" comes from within. It is an auditory hallucination. I
> have no problem with toying with the idea there is a meaning to existence.
> It is mental play which we all need from time to time. But that is not
> excuse to confuse this playful nonsense with reality. There is Nobody Out
> There to answer our prayers to to speak with us. We have to do that for
> ourselve. The still small voice within is our own.
>
And I note that many people think this gives them leave to
ignore said "still small voice".
--
Jette Goldie
je...@blueyonder.co.uk
http://www.jette.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
http://wolfette.livejournal.com/
("reply to" is spamblocked - use the email addy in sig)
Belba Grubb
> Belba Grubb wrote:
>
> >
> > It's not a reasonable thing to ask of us, but what a terrible fate it
> > is to be unable to meet Old Tom's challenge and thus be condemned by
> > one's own will (and, dare I say it, failure of imagination) to a
> > "mostly dead" Universe (a creaky old voice is heard emanating from the
> > general direction of the Milky Way: "I'm not dead yet and YOU are the
> > proof of that!") and a dumb sack of rocks.
>
> That "creaky voice" comes from within. It is an auditory hallucination.
This is where you lost me. Auditory hallucinations exist and yet are
something else. Now, perhaps, if you had quoted something like the
Cullasunnata Sutta, I might have followed along more attentively, but
have to draw the line here: Your grade is F on the Chesterton "test of
imagination."
Fortunately, there are always many opportunities to retake the test.
Tolkien is a good place to start. Perhaps it is appropriate that you
are here on the edges of Faerie. Welcome!
Barb
Taemon
> Fortunately, there are always many opportunities to retake the
> test. Tolkien is a good place to start. Perhaps it is
> appropriate that you are here on the edges of Faerie. Welcome!
Can I help? I don't hear voices yet I have a huge imagination. I have
no idea what you are talking about since I have about half of the
participants kill-filed, but it always bothers me when scientific
reasoning is frowned upon because it doesn't include faeries.
T.
Belba Grubb
It also bothers me: the two are not exclusionary. Separate but equal
is how I view it -- in some situations the one works; in others, the
other approach is most appropriate.
Chesterton's quote is not anti-science so much as it is pro-skepticism;
it must be taken in context (in the larger picture, he was explaining
how he ended up in the belief system he finally embraced
whole-heartedly, which was the same religion as Tolkien's; this
included weighing and rejecting other belief systems, of course).
Perhaps it wasn't the best move to use it out of context that way, but
it was inevitable: that particular section of /Orthodoxy/ has made
appearances all over the Web as "The Logic of Elfland," and I was
reacting to scientific reasoning that was being used here to beat down
a faeriological question (of uncertain canonicity, it's true) and its
explanations; that bothers me as much as the abuse you mention.
Achieving the balance is always tricky.
Anyway, you might want to take my "dancing partner" out of the
killfile, if he is in it (Google Groups will give you the whole
exchange). He has been welcomed to the fringes of Faerie and his
progress will be interesting to follow. The only advice I can give him
is to mind the dragons, be careful of dwarves (although the members of
Durin's family are generally a decent lot), don't carry an axe in
Fangorn Forest, and never ever go out alone at night unless the stars
call you and you have a hobbit's walking song and some Elvish poetry in
your heart.
Barb
Taemon
> Taemon wrote:
>> Can I help? I don't hear voices yet I have a huge imagination.
>> I have no idea what you are talking about since I have about
>> half of the participants kill-filed, but it always bothers me
>> when scientific reasoning is frowned upon because it doesn't
>> include faeries.
> It also bothers me: the two are not exclusionary. Separate but
> equal is how I view it -- in some situations the one works; in
> others, the other approach is most appropriate.
I don't agree, but that's not the point. Thing is - in real life, I
don't care about magic. I care about beauty. And the more one knows,
the more beauty there is to perceive. Of course, that's not how I read
Tolkien. In which it isn't about the magic either, to me. It's about
the humanity.
> Achieving the balance is always tricky.
It certainly is.
> Anyway, you might want to take my "dancing partner" out of the
> killfile, if he is in it (Google Groups will give you the whole
> exchange).
I checked it shortly, but couldn't quite get my finger behind it. I
have a very small killfile, but I think I'll leave it the way it is.
> He has been welcomed to the fringes of Faerie and his
> progress will be interesting to follow. The only advice I can
> give him is to mind the dragons, be careful of dwarves (although
> the members of Durin's family are generally a decent lot), don't
> carry an axe in Fangorn Forest, and never ever go out alone at
> night unless the stars call you and you have a hobbit's walking
> song and some Elvish poetry in your heart.
Why, if you do, the more reason to stay inside! You might never go
home again!
T.
JimboCat
>we might turn to people who can maintain literal
>beliefs in scientifically absurd myths despite the results of modern
>science.
There are certainly plenty of candidates, but we run into the
definition problem: what is a myth? Would conspiracy-theory kooks
qualify? Holocaust-deniers? Free-energy advocates? These are chiefly
characterized by belief in the untrue: whether these beliefs form a
basis of these people's "culture" is debateable, but probably not
resolvable.
Perhaps New-Age beliefs like "crystal energy" might qualify...
>Can you think of a good test example? Something that you would call a
>myth, but which was not believed in its native social and cultural
>context?
Not having studied history extensively, I would want to choose a
contemporary example. William de Hikelyng's Arthurian example is pretty
good (IMO), but you've already rejected that as an example of myth.
>The transient nature of beliefs in modern (and, I think, particularly
>post-modern) society is, I find, something specific to contemporary
>thinking, rather than to human nature in a larger view.
Now, there is a sticking point. I lean more towards the view that human
nature has not changed in 2000 -- nor in 20,000 -- years. I think
teenagers have always rebelled against their parents, for one thing: a
typical 14-year-old in ancient Greece no doubt mocked the gods (in the
company of his friends) just as he would today. But I do not have the
necessary knowledge of history to debate the point.
>If you look a few hundred years back, society was far more stable, and
>everybody (or so nearly everybody as to make no practical difference)
>inherited their parents social status, their jobs and their beliefs --
>both the official beliefs (e.g. Christianity), but also the
>folkloristic beliefs (in elfs, trolls, the witch down by the lake etc.
>etc.).
And is that really any different today? You might say "yes, it is
different": I would say "no, not qualitatively". Not a good starting
point for illuminating discussion.
I think that one other thing that is getting in my way in trying to
think about this is the nagging, subconscious definition of "myth" as
"something no longer believed in". That sort of negates all
consideration of contemporary myth. The other subconscious definition
that I find difficult to shake is "something believed in that is not
true", and that one is even worse. I think I can't continue this
discussion without doing some research first, and finding some sort of
theoretical or at least conceptual framework in which to pose ideas.
I may return to this thread, but at the moment I am at the Hollin gate
and I can't figure out the password to open the doors.
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"Professor Grinspoon and actually many others as having a much better
grasp of the laws of physics and thereby of having an open mindset upon
planetology and of the sorts of harsh environment capable forms of
other
life that could be possible, as typically these folks having less often
if ever having been formally published, haven't actually verbatim
excluded the possibility of there having been other life on Venus,
though much less having bothered as to exclude upon intelligent ETs as
making a go of it at their coexisting efforts." -- Brad Guth
Christopher Kreuzer
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
<snip>
>> Can you think of a good test example? Something that you would call a
>> myth, but which was not believed in its native social and cultural
>> context?
I think alien abductions is a good example. In fact, this is nothing more or
less than a modern version of an ancient myth. There have long been myths
about the gods, or other supernatural or angelic beings, abducting people,
and having children with them. In this age of scientific reason mixed with
unreason, the alien abduction stories are a natural form of that myth.
If you want to turn to more normal, natural world myths, I would guess that
the Indian Ocean tsunami, and other natural disasters (volcanos,
earthquakes, hurricanes) have spawned their own myths, despite the available
scientific explanations.
And as for modern myths spawned by today's technology. We do have tales that
are told and retold through the (shorter) silicon ages - internet urban
myths. Think of the stories that everyone has heard of: the man who was
pulled up the side of a building by a bucket of bricks wrapped around a
pulley.
>> The transient nature of beliefs in modern (and, I think, particularly
>> post-modern) society is, I find, something specific to contemporary
>> thinking, rather than to human nature in a larger view.
>
> Now, there is a sticking point. I lean more towards the view that
> human nature has not changed in 2000 -- nor in 20,000 -- years. I
> think teenagers have always rebelled against their parents, for one
> thing: a typical 14-year-old in ancient Greece no doubt mocked the
> gods (in the company of his friends) just as he would today.
The ancients were both similar and dis-similar. It is too easy to
generalise. In some ways they would be no different to us. In others, they
would be worlds apart. It depends on the specifics of what you are talking
about.
<snip>
> I may return to this thread, but at the moment I am at the Hollin gate
> and I can't figure out the password to open the doors.
LOL! Nice metaphor!
Christopher
Belba Grubb
>Thing is - in real life, I
> don't care about magic. I care about beauty. And the more one knows,
> the more beauty there is to perceive. Of course, that's not how I read
> Tolkien. In which it isn't about the magic either, to me. It's about
> the humanity.
For some reason that I can't quite pin down, this brings to mind the
word "creation," which might include all these things; it reminds me of
what JRRT said in /On Fairy-stories/ (which is also evocative of what
someone said much earlier in this thread about the "life-blood" of
philology):
But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that
produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or
incantation in Faerie is more potent. And that is not
surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only
another view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mythical
grammar. The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey,
yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make
heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow
gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the
one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we
can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from
blood, we have already an enchanter's power-upon one
plane; and the desire to wield that power in the world
external to our minds awakes. It does not follow that we
shall use that power well upon any plane. We may put a
deadly green upon a man's face and produce a horror;
we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine;
or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves
and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into
the belly of the cold worm. But in such "fantasy," as it
is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man
becomes a sub-creator.
Here the science is philology - Faerie, beauty, magic are in there,
too, and underlying it all, as you say: humanity.
Here is perhaps another example. When the recent spate of movies came
out, someone wrote to a Usenet geology group and asked which volcano
looked the most like Mount Doom. A geologist, a scientist, came up
with the perfect answer (IMO): Mount Merapi: (see the first two
pictures here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4927342.stm for
instance, although the second one is missing Sauron's Road winding
around the to the Crack of Doom on the other side of the mountain; can
you see the two little hobbits, one carrying the other, staggering up
the lower reaches there?). How does one adequately describe the
synthesis going on in the thought processes of someone who is an expert
in the science of volcanoes and yet able to see the "magic" or "Faerie"
side of them.
And then there are the villagers who live on the side of the volcano,
who didn't evacuate during the most recent eruptions this summer but
prayed to their gods for protection. The volcano did not kill them or
destroy their villages (this time), and I'm sure they all feel
vindicated. There is a very interesting mental synthesis and evocation
of a flavor of Faerie going on there, too. OFS again:
Something really "higher" is occasionally glimpsed in
mythology: Divinity, the right to power (as distinct from
its possession), the due worship; in fact "religion."
Andrew Lang said, and is by some still commended for
saying, that mythology and religion (in the strict sense
of that word) are two distinct things that have become
inextricably entangled, though mythology is in itself
almost devoid of religious significance.
Yet these things have in fact become entangled-or
maybe they were sundered long ago and have since
groped slowly, through a labyrinth of error, through
confusion, back towards re-fusion. Even fairy-stories
as a whole have three faces: the Mystical towards
the Supernatural; the Magical towards Nature; and
the Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man. The
essential face of Faerie is the middle one, the
Magical. But the degree in which the others appear
(if at all) is variable, and may be decided by the
individual story-teller.
It is indeed the humanity.
> > never ever go out alone at
> > night unless the stars call you and you have a hobbit's walking
> > song and some Elvish poetry in your heart.
>
> Why, if you do, the more reason to stay inside! You might never go
> home again!
That's not a bad thing, for you may end up in Rivendell, a permanent
guest of Elrond Halfelven.
Or you may end up in the insane asylum, if you attempt to understand it
too much:
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens.
It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into
his head. And it is his head that splits.
-- G. K. Chesterton, again, in /Orthodoxy/
Better to leave the universe of stars outdoors to walk under (or dance
under, if an Elvish or Bombadil mood comes on), and human-sized poetry
and song inside, in one's heart!
Where is the quote in /The Lord of the Rings/ from Frodo about how
Bilbo would come back from walks sometimes in a very strange mood,
telling Frodo how you had to be careful when you went out, that this
very road in front of Bag End led to the Lonely Mountain and beyond?
That is really the challenge and the fascination in such tales, isn't
it -- to get the audience to leave their home and be swept away, not
always to a happy ending.
Barb
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> Better to leave the universe of stars outdoors to walk under (or dance
> under, if an Elvish or Bombadil mood comes on), and human-sized poetry
> and song inside, in one's heart!
>
> Where is the quote in /The Lord of the Rings/ from Frodo about how
> Bilbo would come back from walks sometimes in a very strange mood,
> telling Frodo how you had to be careful when you went out, that this
> very road in front of Bag End led to the Lonely Mountain and beyond?
It's the bit in 'Three is Company', where Pippin and Sam are looking out
onto new lands they have never seen before, as they contemplate the start of
their adventure. Frodo recites the Old Walking Song ('The Road Goes Ever
On), and then gives them a bit of the history and philosophy behind it:
"[Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great
river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary.
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say.
"You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no
knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the
very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take
you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?" He used to
say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he
had been out for a long walk." (Three is Company)
> That is really the challenge and the fascination in such tales, isn't
> it -- to get the audience to leave their home and be swept away, not
> always to a happy ending.
And then to bring them safely home again.
Reminds me of Peter Pan.
Christopher
Taemon
> How does one adequately
> describe the synthesis going on in the thought processes of
> someone who is an expert in the science of volcanoes and yet able
> to see the "magic" or "Faerie" side of them.
I'd say with the word "more" :-) More knowledge is more beauty to
see. And more beauty only adds to the magic, does it not?
T.
JimboCat
>someone wrote to a Usenet geology group and asked which volcano
>looked the most like Mount Doom. A geologist, a scientist, came up
>with the perfect answer (IMO): Mount Merapi: (see the first two
>pictures here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4927342.stm
Very nice! Just to put in my 2 cents, a link to a really cool picture
of a volcano is here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060607.html
taken from the ISS in orbit. Not Mount Doom, but very cool anyway.
More info about this volcano at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Volcano
If you click on the coordinates (upper right of page) you're taken to a
page with links to lots of kinds of maps including google earth (it's
not erupting in the google earth images).
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"Grok - To savor the drink of knowledge so that it soaks into your
spirit."
-- The Wanderer
William de Hikelyng
<pseudonim...@yahoo.com.br> wrote:
>
> chrisk...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>> And now that you mention it, the song of Aragorn and Legolas about the
>> West, South and North winds is interesting, and the lack of a mention
>> of the East wind. But I'm not really sure exactly how to tie that in
>> with the other wind stuff.
>
> Speaking of metereology, what do you think of the thheory that
> Luthien's singing affected the position of the sun? Personally, I find
> it a little too Christopher-Tolkien for my tastes.
>
I'm not sure what you mean by "too Christopher-Tolkien."